


a humming in the restless summer air

by narryblossom



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - America, Camping, Firewatch au, M/M, Slow Burn, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 08:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10509642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narryblossom/pseuds/narryblossom
Summary: “I swore that I would never go back and I would never do this again, but this is my sixth consecutive year here.” Louis sighs wistfully into the receiver in a voice more sincere than Harry has heard from him yet. “Umpqua is a really great place, believe it or not. Great things can happen out here, Harry, just give it a chance. Don’t lock yourself away all summer.”(Harry falls in love too easily, Niall’s perpetually sunburned, Louis isn’t a stickler for rules, and Liam makes sure they don’t die.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a video game called Firewatch. It's set in America in the 1980's, so it uses Americanisms like miles and fahrenheit. [You can find me here on tumblr.](http://narryblossom.tumblr.com/post/159042993335/a-humming-in-the-restless-summer-air-narry)

When Harry’s hand makes contact with the hot exterior of his truck, he almost draws back in pain. The metal burns his skin as he follows through despite his initial shock, slamming the door shut. He’s annoyed that the metal frame has absorbed the heat of the air, and he’s annoyed that the temperature is set to reach 90 by noon. Of course, of all the days he could have been assigned to go to the middle of nowhere, he’s assigned the  _ one day _ the temperature is almost unbearable in the sun, and all he’s going to be  _ getting  _ is sun.

Harry turns his head towards the sky and squints, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the intense light above. The thud from his door has echoed through the forest surrounding the small lot he stands in, sending birds scattering from their perches and squirrels running off back to their homes. He watches as they disappear from sight, and then he sighs.

Harry wishes he could go home, he thinks as he tosses his keys through the open window of his truck. He can tell that they fall onto the floor as they jingle and tumble. He doesn’t bother making sure they’re visible, and he hopes the ranger who takes his truck back to the station will be smart enough to look under the seat.

Now that he isn’t in the mediocre shade the cab provides, he feels the effects of the beating sun on his skin immediately. He thinks his journey is going to be a very warm one, adding to the level of unbearability it already has. For a moment he pauses and thinks that he almost wishes he hadn’t signed himself up for this. Almost.

Harry groans when he heaves his hiking pack out of the truck bed, only briefly checking that everything is appropriately strapped in before he slings it over his back and tightens the straps around his chest. He knows he shouldn’t have packed so much shit when he feels how heavy it is, how the straps dig into his shoulders and the boxy bottom hits his back uncomfortably, so he only hopes that he’ll have a good bed wherever he’s going. (Harry considers that maybe that’s too much to ask for, but he keeps it in mind anyway. If he doesn’t have anything to look forward to, he might not make it.)

He’s almost hesitant to walk away from the rust-red pickup. He knows the path he walks won’t be paved and lined with gravel like the one he could drive down if he backs out right now, deciding that air conditioning and running water are more important to him than an  _ experience. _ He knows it’s going to take a hell of a lot out of him to hike 35 miles deep into the mountains, but…

Harry walks towards the trailhead before he can change his mind--it’s a bold start considering less than ten minutes later he’s struggling to reach around his side to pull out his map and pen to mark the path he has to take.

He gets it eventually, though, and he’s off on his way again, wandering deeper and deeper into a national park without a clue of what he’s  _ really _ getting himself into. The trees provide excellent cover where they’re abundant, and being in the shade is much more tolerable than being in the sun’s wrath. It’s still hot though, he notices when he’s three miles into his hike and his clothes are beginning to cling to every inch of him. Harry’s glad that he skipped out on wearing leggings under his shorts, because it would  _ definitely _ be too hot for that, and he isn’t too keen on walking around naked or changing clothes in the woods-- _ can never be too sure of what’s out there and watching, _ he thinks.

Harry stops hiking when his trail goes from mostly downhill to flatlands. He traces his map the best he can to tell him how far he’s gone, and he thinks he’s halfway done for the day. He isn’t sure how to use the sun to tell what time it is, but it’s halfway across the sky now rather than perched right up in the center. What he  _ does _ know is that he could really use something to eat, and he  _ really _ wouldn’t mind sitting along the bank of a creek his path crosses with his feet in the water for a while.

That’s how Harry finds himself accidentally dropping not only his granola bar, but also his left boot into the water. He’s really very clumsy and he isn’t sure he should have given himself so much credit when thinking sitting near water is a good idea.

He fishes his boot out before water can seep inside of it and thinks if he’s careful, he can hike with only one shoe for the next mile or two while it dries. Also, he doesn’t mind a soggy granola bar as much as he thought he would.

Harry consults his map again and again every time his path curls, trying to make sure he’s going in the right direction. He wishes it would show him where drop offs and hills are, because he’s already almost walked off the side of rock faces too many times for comfort. He’s starting to worry that he’s going to accidentally die before he gets where he’s going, and how embarrassing is  _ that _ \-- _ accidentally _ dying.

When the sky is turning gray and sunlight is harder and harder to come by through the lush canopy, Harry knows he has to find a place to sleep. He had never considered himself one to be afraid of the dark, but while he’s searching for a clearing big enough for him to lay down in, he swears he sees eyes looking at him or hears howls and feet scuttering by every few minutes. So maybe he is afraid of the dark, merely because it gives coverage to what hides in it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Harry’s lucky that hiking most of the day wore him out so much, because it helps him sleep straight through the night and well into the morning until the sunlight starts peeking through the trees, landing just on his face, slowly waking him up.

He’s still in one piece, he notes when he wakes up, and nothing has rummaged through his things or run off with them. He’s  _ really _ lucky, he realizes with a pale face after he’s started his hike again, because there are signs of coyotes not far from where he was sleeping. If he were awake last night to be afraid they were going to find him, he probably would have cried. He keeps his eyes peeled for the next few hours, jumping at every noise, afraid that something is going to jump out at him.

After repeating and learning from his mistakes for the rest of the day, Harry comes to a signpost with the name of his sector on it, big and bold, stating he’s now in the right area. He cheers and howls in excitement, throwing his fists up as a sign of victory. There were moments over the past couple of days where he genuinely thought he wasn’t going to make it, but here he is!

...two miles away from the base of a hill that’s easily a few hundred feet tall, with an equally as tall tower settled just at the top.

He slowly lowers his arm as he watches a large bird circle the top of his tower like some sort of awful foreboding sign. He tsks under his breath and discounts the bird, knowing he’s come too far to let a bird scare him off. He huffs out a breath in annoyance before pulling his pack up higher on his shoulders and starting off towards the hill, racing the remaining sunlight.

Harry tries to run when he gets to the base of the hill, but his pack weighs him down and his legs are tired enough to make every step a struggle until he’s leaning forward on all fours, almost crawling to the top. When he reaches the base of the tower, he’s beyond  _ done _ with hiking and climbing, so he sits at the base of the stairs and almost drifts to sleep until he hears an owl hooting in a tree as if to say  _ you’re almost there, just go upstairs. _

He manages to climb the stairs just barely, holding onto the railing and pulling himself up as he goes equally as much as he uses his legs to push himself, but it works for him because soon he’s standing at the top of the tower, feeling up the doorframe for the hidden key.

He pushes the door open and stumbles in, letting his pack fall from his back just as soon as the door clicks shut behind him. He shuffles around with his hands out in front of him until his eyes adjust to the darkness, and when he feels something at the height of his knees that feels like a mattress, he falls onto it and almost immediately goes into a deep, much needed, sleep.

He doesn’t look around the room to see what he’s got until he wakes up in the morning. There’s not much, he notes, but he also can’t  _ see _ much either. The windows are all boarded up, and he guesses that should probably be the first thing he does--clear his view of the forest.

He sits up slowly and scratches his belly gently where his shirt has risen up to expose it while he slept, then Harry swings his legs over the side of the bed and notices that he’s slept in his boots again without thinking of it. He thinks that he should probably change while his windows are covered up ‘cause it seems the most decent time to do so since he isn’t sure if anyone can see him from where he is and he really doesn’t want himself naked to be their first impression of him. (He might sit on his bed naked for another hour or so, though, just resting and breathing and dreading the end of his summer when he’ll have to do that awful hike  _ again _ .)

After he’s gotten dressed into something  _ clean _ and begrudgingly put his boots back on, Harry hobbles his way down the stairs of his lookout tower to find the generator that he was told will give his tower power. By the time he’s neared the ground, he can see it nestled in the tressels behind the shorter, half staircase at the base of the tower. He spends a few minutes examining it for some sort of on-switch, and eventually he connects that he has to pull a cord like a motor to start it up, and soon it’s whirring to life.

When Harry gets back to the top of his tower (an admittedly extended amount of time later), he flicks the light switch up and smiles equally as bright as the bulb when it turns on. He might also wander around, poking and prodding at everything that’s now able to turn on. It’s just electricity like what he has at home, but there’s something more amusing about it now that it’s in a 100 foot high tower powered only by a small generator down by the ground. 

While Harry’s looking for things to turn on and off, he finds a crowbar and a hammer and remembers he was going to un-obscure his view of the forest before something so common fascinated him.

He steps outside the door and instead of looking at the beautiful view of North Umpqua, he turns to the weathered plywood and starts trying to wedge his crowbar between the wood and the actual wall. He gets the hang of it after he clears the first wall, and by the time he’s done, he’s sweating through his shirt. It’s a combination of labor and being in direct sunlight with no shade, he reasons. Also, it’s just  _ really _ hot.

“Good afternoon, Fairview,” a voice squawks from somewhere in his room, startling Harry so much that he drops his crowbar. “You've slept all damn day. Can you hear me?” The voice is chuckling while Harry scrambles back inside, trying to find the source of the noise. It maybe takes him a minute too long to realize there’s a walkie talkie laying on the counter.

“Helloooo?” The voice calls.

“Uh,” Harry stammers, turning the radio in his hands a few times until he finally figures out which button to press to transmit his voice back to the other person. “I hear you,” he says timidly.

“Fan _ -tastic _ ,” the other voice laughs, “only took you half an hour to figure it out. Are you my lookout, then?”

“I, um, I am. Yeah. I’m Harry Styles, sir.”

“That name sounds right,” they mumble, leaving their transmission on while they must shuffle through something like a stack of papers, if the rustling is anything to go by.

“Yeah, that’s you, then. Sometimes people wander up and try to claim lookouts so I just had to check. I’m Louis, I’m your boss for the summer. I’m in the tower to your northeast. Can you see me from there?”

Harry isn’t sure yet which way is northeast, so he looks out a couple of the windows until he sees another tower in the distance. “Yeah,” he says, “I see your tower up on the mountain.”

“Good, good,” Louis cheers, “Look, I really do hate to bother you so soon, but I've got eyes on some fucking idiots shooting fireworks to your west about a mile or two. I'm gonna need you to go stop them before they burn the forest down on your first day.”

“Is that part of my job?” Harry fires back immediately. He’s quick to cover it up, though, when he hears a scoff from the other side of the line and realizes that he shouldn’t have been so quick to say that.

“I mean!” he interrupts before Louis can answer, “I mean I didn’t mean it like  _ tha-- _ ”

“Your job is whatever I tell you it is,” Louis cuts him off, “head on out there, Harry. Knock some sense into them.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry mumbles, glancing around to see if there’s anything he’ll need to take with him. He thinks maybe he should bring a rope or two in case he finds a section of shale he’ll need to climb down, and well, thinking of all the possibilities of what he might need makes him take his entire bag, but thankfully it’s lighter now since he’s unpacked his typewriter, clothes, books...things he didn’t really need but is glad he brought since it seems like he’s going to have a very long very boring summer up in the sky.

“And cut the sir shit, I’m too young for that,” Louis adds as Harry is tightening a support strap around his chest. He chuckles, but he doesn’t respond. What he  _ does _ do is clip his radio to the strap across his pecs in case Louis needs to say something else to him while he’s out (if the radio will even get service down in the valley).

Harry hardly gets to the bottom of the stairs when Louis says, “you didn’t ask how old I am.”

“Um…” Harry stammers, trying to hold down the button while also holding his map and a compass. “How old are you?”

“30,” Louis replies matter-of-factly. “I just turned 30 in December! I’m not old.”

“You’re right,” Harry agrees, silently thinking that since it’s May, Louis is really almost 30 and a  _ half _ . “You’re not old.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Louis says, and Harry thinks he’s teasing. “How old are you then, Styles?”

“28,” Harry grunts. He’s found a narrow and almost grown-over path from his tower down the west-facing side of the hill, and while talking to Louis, he’s trying to swat away thorn bushes and move branches that have gotten in his way.

“Aww, you’re just a baby!,” Louis coos, ignoring Harry’s distress. “Why are you out in the forest--who let you in?”

“I’m not sure how 28 is the same as being a baby,” Harry sighs in frustration with his navigation skills, eyeing his compass while he treads down a winding path, “but the forest isn’t exactly guarded.”

“Touche,” Louis clucks, “I think we’ll get along, Styles. Have you found the camp yet?”

Harry doesn’t mention that he’s only been out of his tower for five minutes and that it takes longer to locate someone when you’ve only got their general direction than Louis seems to think.

“Not exactly,” he says in a questioning tone, adding after, “I’m on my way down. Can you still see the fireworks?”

“Just look up, I’m sure you’ll see them when you get close.” A prolonged squeak comes over the air with Louis’ voice and it sounds like Louis says something else that isn’t directed at him. Harry can just imagine someone leaning back in their chair like their job is the easiest thing in the world, and it frustrates him.

“Yeah, I’m sure I would too if I wasn’t in the  _ forest _ . I can’t see anything but trees,” Harry reminds him.

“They’re not exactly  _ quiet _ . You’re not deaf, are you? Can’t you hear them exploding?”

“Well I probably  _ could _ hear them, but there’s this voice in my ear, yanno?” Harry really doesn’t mean to sound annoyed, but he’s getting turned around in the forest and he really doesn’t want to have to jump down off a boulder and risk not having a way back up, but that seems to be his only way down to where he suspects the firework offenders are.

“In your ear? Mate, I  _ hope _ I’m not in your ear,” Louis says, and then yells, “‘cause if I yell, you might break some of your corti.”

“My,” Harry asks, scrunching his face up and holding the radio away from him as far as possible while sliding down to his knees and then his butt as he wiggles closer to the edge of the rock, “my  _ what _ ?”

“The  _ hairs _ ,” Louis says, “in your  _ ears _ that allow you to  _ hear _ .” Harry thinks he hears giggling. Maybe he really has broken his--corti? Ear hairs?

“Well, I guess I wouldn’t wanna break those, then,” Harry says, then adds, “but you weren’t literally in my ear.”

“I hoped not.”

Harry thinks Louis seems easy enough to get along with, and he’s glad his boss isn’t some old jerk in the woods who won’t talk to him. He also thinks that he’s trying to stall for time when really he should be going along on his way, jumping off this ten foot rock.

Harry clips the radio to his chest again before scooting closer to the edge of the rock, taking a deep breath as he does so. He kicks off and falls to the ground, bending his knees and landing on his feet with just a minor trip in his step as he keeps on.

He looks at the rock after he’s regained his balance and realizes, yeah, he won’t be able to climb back up. The face of it he can see now is smooth with very little hold.  _ There better be another path back _ , he think  _ or I’m fucked. _

He tries not to worry about it as he keeps heading west, climbing over fallen trees and crossing creeks while he goes. When the forest starts to get less dense and the sunlight can actually shine through the branches, Harry hears a loud whistle as another firework is shot into the sky. He also hears a surge of laughter, and he perks up.

“I hear voices, I think I found them,” he reports to Louis quietly.

“Yanno, now that I think about it, it’s probably the same group that comes every year. Those idiots know they’re not supposed to have fireworks! Go in there and bust ‘em.”

Harry almost says “yes sir” but catches himself before he does.

He emerges from the forest a few seconds later, walking into an open clearing of dirt and tall grasses underneath an outcropping of rock. His immediate reaction is something along the lines of “I would camp here too if I were in their position.”

“Hey,” Harry calls out to them, waving his arm above his head as he walks closer. Most of them turn to look at him, but some set about grabbing a few more cans of something from their cooler--Harry assumes it’s beer by the time he gets over to them and smells the stench of it all around.

“Can you guys cool it with the fireworks? It’s fire season and you’re in the middle of a national park. You’re not even supposed to  _ have _ those here.”

_ “What,” _ one of them chuckles, “are you gonna, like, arrest us or somethin’?” He fixes his dark eyes on Harry in a challenging glare. Harry thinks the cigarette he’s holding isn’t really tobacco, if he has to guess.

“Well,” he tries, “I can’t, no, not really, but I’m gonna have to take your fireworks if you don’t stop.” He feels very lanky and awkward in this guy’s gaze and would really just like to end this altercation as soon and as easily as possible.

“Aw, did you hear that, guys?” the guy asks, turning to the blond boy tucked under his arm even though he addresses the whole group. No one else seems interested, Harry notices as he glances around nervously. “He’s gonna take them from us.”

“Cut the shit, Zayn,” the blond hisses back, setting a frown into the boy’s face. He clearly didn’t think someone was gonna challenge him. “I told you we shouldn’t have done it in the first place.”

“Whatever,” the guy--Zayn--scoffs, taking a pull of his cigarette while looking back up towards Harry. “Take ‘em then, they’re shitty anyway.”

Harry scrambles over to the pile of remaining fireworks before the guy can change his mind, picking them all up into his arms quickly. He turns to leave and almost moves his arm out to drop the remaining tubes into the fire, but he catches himself before he does, realizing that would just set them all off in every which direction.

“What a dumbass,” he hears behind him, along with some giggling from the girls. He bites his lip and holds the fireworks tighter against his chest while he quickens his pace, deciding he’s not going to look back.

“I got them,” he says to Louis after a few minutes when he can no longer hear the camp mocking him. “How often are people out here?” He tries not to sound too disappointed in his first experience as a watchman doing ranger-for-a-day duties, but he’s afraid it comes through anyway, and if it does, Louis doesn’t comment on it.

“Rarely if ever,” Louis says back, “Put those fireworks in one of the cache boxes so a ranger can pick them up later, would ya?”

“Um,” Harry trails, dropping the fireworks and his pack to dig out his map. “I don’t...know where those are.”

“They should be on your map. They are ever-standing beings of critical importance, Styles, so you better learn where they are pretty quick.”

“Are they the little yellow boxes?”

_ “Yes _ ,” Louis says, “and there’s one north of your tower. Just go put ‘em up there and then you can go about your day doing whatever it is.”

Harry packs fireworks into his bag while Louis talks, then he studies his map, chewing on his lip while he looks for the appropriate trail to take north.

“Also, they’re all locked.”

“Locked?” Harry asks, furrowing his brow.

“The code is really very tricky. Write this down, I don’t think you’ll remember it.”

“I haven’t got a pen!” Harry screeches, looking down into his bag, shoving things aside left and right to see if he might have brought one and just forgot about it.

“You better remember it then,” Louis says with a smirk that Harry can’t see. “Ready?”

“No!” he yells, turning his bag over and dumping everything out, frantically searching for anything to write with.

“1-2-3-4.”

Harry stops suddenly, staring at the contents of his bag all over the ground in awe. His eye might be twitching when he repeats the code to Louis as a question, making sure he heard right.

“Yes, 1-2-3-4. Very important. That’s the code for  _ all _ of them, so remember it.”

Harry doesn’t hold down the transmission button while he cusses and curses, shoving everything back into his bag haphazardly. He got all anxious for nothing, thinking he was going to miss some sort of important code, and now he’s just embarrassed that he didn’t realize Louis was messing with him.

He really wants to go back to bed.

He uses this as inspiration to start hiking again, honestly. He tells himself with every step that he’s getting closer and closer to climbing back up into his tower and into his bed. It works well enough, ‘cause it gets him to hike straight up a hill instead of taking the winding trail side to side, and it convinces him to climb up a small bluff rather than hiking around it for an alternate path.

Harry soon after realizes that the cache boxes are easier to find that he thought they would be. The one he finds is big enough for someone to hide in if they curl up enough, and it’s painted bright yellow so it’s easy to spot amongst all the green and brown of the forest.

The lock hanging from the edge is rusted and it’s hard to get the numbered wheels to spin, but Harry does it eventually and dumps the fireworks in. There isn’t much else to be found inside besides an old looking letter and some velvety deer antlers, so Harry closes and locks the box back up without much second thought.

“It’s done,” he reports to Louis while he checks his compass for which direction he’s facing and which way he needs to go next.

“That doesn’t sound ominous at all,” Louis chuckles back.

Harry doesn’t mind that they don’t really say anything to each other for the next couple of days. He spends his time in his tower doing fuck all but resting his sore feet after the journey he had over the past few days, and Louis doesn’t bother him.

By the third day, though, that’s when Harry’s getting a bit lonely. He hopes his job won’t be like this, just sitting on a perch in the sky all summer with no one to talk to, but if it ends up that way he thinks he’ll get used to it--also thinks he might have misjudged Louis’ desire to keep in touch with his lookouts.

Harry sits in contemplation for a few minutes, juggling his radio from hand to hand. He doesn’t  _ need _ anything, so he doesn’t wanna bother Louis in case he’s only supposed to call for emergencies, but also he thinks he needs to make sure Louis hasn’t spontaneously died.

“What’s your lookout name?” Harry asks, staring out in the distance at a peak of what he thinks is Mt. McLoughlin.

“Oakridge,” Louis replies almost immediately, “Why? You hiking out?”

“No,” Harry says, “I just didn’t know.”

“Copy. You having fun yet? ‘Cause this is about as fun as it gets, just...watching. Thinking.”

“It’s alright,” Harry admits, “I’m a little...lonely, though.”

“You’ll get used to that after a while.” Louis pauses like he isn’t going to say anything else, but he talks again before Harry has to. “My first summer here was awful, I absolutely thought I was going to die. I grew up in a really full house, so ending up out here in the middle of nowhere was like...this  _ huge _ shock.”

“How’d you deal with it?” Harry asks quietly, resting his radio against his chest as he leans back in his chair, lowering his eyes to the desk in front of him.

“I hardly did. I don’t know what to tell you. I missed my sisters like crazy and spent my whole first year convinced they were gonna hate me for leaving them to take care of themselves.”

“Oh.”

“I swore that I would never go back and I would never do this again, but this is my sixth consecutive year here.” Louis sighs wistfully into the receiver in a voice more sincere than Harry has heard from him yet. “Umpqua is a really great place, believe it or not. Great things can happen out here, Harry, just give it a chance. Don’t lock yourself away all summer.”

Harry wants to ask why Louis changed his mind and came back, but he can’t bring himself to say the words. He doesn’t think it’s any of his business even though Louis  _ did _ just open up a bit about why he struggled a few years ago. Regardless, he just doesn’t think that Louis would open up to him much more than he already has just because Harry asks him to.

“You should get out,” Louis says, “go back by that camp you saw a few days ago, there’s a really nice spot in the lake out there. There’s nothing that needs your immediate attention, anyway. Go explore a bit, get some fresh air.”

“I think I might,” Harry says softly, eyes lighting up even though there’s no one around to see. He values recommendations from other people whether he thinks he’ll personally enjoy them or not--the fact that someone is willing to share something they really like with him makes him feel special, always.

When Harry actually gets around to getting up and heading out, he decides to stray from the trails marked on his map. He does so under the impression that he’ll need to know his way around even when he doesn't have his map, but then he realizes that without it, he won't know where he's going no matter  _ what  _ trail he is or is not on. He still finds it fun to explore and forage his own way, anyway, until he gets lost and spends ten minutes walking in circles trying to find the best way off a ridge. It feels oddly familiar to the last time Harry went west, but he knows this ridge is different when he’s able to climb down it and feel comfortable going back up later.

He should have just taken the trail on his map, he thinks when he finally breaks through to the clearing.  _ Or, better yet, I could have just stayed in my tower, _ he internally yells at himself when he sees a tent still standing where the camp of people was a few days ago, sending a shot of anxiety through his system. He doesn’t want to confront the asshole camper who challenged him before, or  _ any _ of them really because they were  _ all _ laughing when the one guy--Zack?--was making fun of him as he ran off.

Harry consults his map for a moment to find if he  _ really _ has to go past the tent, and well, yeah. He does have to go just past the tent, because the map says the trail is  _ under _ the tent, and Harry can vaguely make out an area where the grass is lower around the woodsy area just to the left of the tent as the trail.

Harry kicks his feet a little, stirring up some dust and pebbles before folding his map up and shoving it in his back pocket, cursing under his breath while starting off towards the tent. He would walk through the tall grass if it wasn’t prime tick season, but he really doesn’t want to have to search himself later so he walks along the treeline before cutting through the clearing, speed walking past the tent. Harry thinks he hears a sniffle or a whimper when he passes it but he doesn’t bother thinking too much about it as he darts towards the rest of his trail.

The trail he’s on now is twisty and clearly not walked very often, and also littered with clothes.

_ Um, _ he thinks,  _ has someone died here, or… _ Harry thinks as he slowly progresses along the trail. It’s very short, he soon finds as he approaches the opening to the lake and sees several piles of clothes, all seemingly female, sitting around a rock with a(n admittedly bangin’) stereo on top.

“Is that a guy over there?” he hears, catching his attention. He looks up and is immediately very aware of four very naked girls in the lake. He gasps slightly, darting his eyes away and then back towards them several times while they talk amongst themselves.

“Hey!” one of them shouts, “why don’t you come in and join us?”

_ “Jesy _ !” he can hear another one of the girls scold her while the others giggle and the first one--Jesy, then--whistles at him.

“S-sorry,” Harry calls to them, “I’ll just be on my way.” He hopes they can’t see him blushing from where they are in the middle of the lake. He also hopes they don’t get mad at him when he accidentally trips over some of their clothes--namely, a spotted bra that was sprawled out on the ground.

Harry quickly dusts himself off before scurrying like the critters back into the forest. When he’s just far enough in that the girls can’t see him and he can’t see the tent, he gets his walkie talkie and calls to Louis.

“I went to the lake like you said, but there are, um...girls.”

“Girls?” Louis responds, and Harry can hear him cackling as he closes the line, whether Louis is aware of it or not.

_ “Yes _ ,” Harry hisses,  _ “naked _ girls. They’re all skinny dipping.”

“How many are there?” Louis teases, “maybe you can get to third base with one of them.”

_ “No _ ,” Harry insists softly, making his way back towards the tower slowly as he talks. “I’m not...I don’t...I’m, um...working? I’m on duty aren’t I?”

“Look,” Louis starts, and Harry can almost  _ hear _ him shrugging, “what you do in your time is up to you. No one’s gonna know except for me now since you’ve told me.”

“I’m just gonna head back to my tower,” Harry sighs.

“Sure,” Louis drags, “I’ll see you back then, Fairview.”

Harry clips his radio to his chest and carefully climbs over the fallen log at the head of the trail. The sniffles and whimpers he heard from the tent before has now turned into wet sobs and messy blown noses. He really wants to walk past, but he can't in good conscience.

“Uh,” he opens softly, stepping forward to gently tap on the side of the tent. “Are you...are you okay?”

Harry can tell that someone sits up quickly by the sound of them sliding against the bottom of the tent. The sun is shining from behind him, casting his shadow on the tent, so unfortunately he can’t tell if the person in there is moving or packing heat, but he hopes they aren’t.

“Hello?” he asks again, reaching for the zipper slowly when it’s suddenly ripped down.

“I’m,” the person stutters, looking up at Harry against the sunlight. “I’m fine. Thanks…”

“Are you sure..? I can like, call in or something if you, like, need a guide out of here or...something…”

“No,” they shake their head, standing up out of the tent. Harry finally recognizes the person as the blond boy that was tucked under the asshole’s arm a few days ago, except now he looks like he hasn’t showered in a few days, and his face is splotchy, red, and a bit swollen.

“I’ll be fine,” he says,  _ “really.” _

“Okay… but if you, like, need anything…? There’s a path in the woods over there,” Harry says, twisting his torso towards where he’s heading, also raising his arm to point, “you can take it up and find me, I’m just up there in a tower. You can see it from the other side of the woods, I’m sure…”

“Got it,” he nods, crossing his arms over his chest protectively. He doesn’t look like he wants to do much talking, Harry guesses based on the way his eyes trace their feet.

“I’ll be off, then…” Harry says lamely, wringing the bottom of his t-shirt in his hands. “Bye.”

“Mm,” the boy hums.

Harry walks away, but he still doesn’t feel like he’s accomplished anything.

“Hey Lou?” Harry asks when he gets back in his tower and after his breathing has calmed down from the hike.

“‘Lou?’ Alright, then. What’s up...uh...Haz?”

“Haz?” Harry chuckles, “That’s a new one. I think the only nickname I’ve ever had is ‘H,’ but  _ anyway _ ,” he shakes his head, trying to keep himself on topic. “You remember when you told me to go out to get those fireworks?”

“Like, on Monday? Yeah. What about it? You didn’t keep them did you?”

“No, no, not at all. It’s just...when I went to get them, there was a whole camp of people. Like, ten or eleven of them I guess. And this one dickweed was being a douche ‘cause I was gonna take them, but there was another guy, a blond one--”

“A blond one, mhm. Relevant.”

_ “A blond one _ ,” Harry repeats himself, ignoring Louis’s comment, “who mellowed him out, and like, when I went back past the camp today to go to the lake--”

“Where those naked babes tried to seduce you.”

Harry rolls his eyes and tries not to laugh--Louis’s funnier than Harry wants to admit, or maybe Harry’s sense of humor is just blander than most.

“When I went past the camp, there was still one tent there instead of the four that were there before, and I thought I heard crying? So when I was headed back I stopped to see if they were okay, and it was the blond one. Alone. Like, it looked like everyone just upped and left him. I didn’t know what to do.”

“So blondie is stranded out here?”

“I’m not sure. Like, I’m sure he could leave if he really needed to, and he could have, like, asked me for directions or something, but he didn’t so…”

“Good to know,” Louis drawls slowly, contemplating his next move. “I’m gonna tip a ranger, okay? Not like one of the mean ones, just my friend Liam. He’ll go out there and make sure blondie is okay, maybe tomorrow or the day after, and I’ll let you know what’s up.”

“Thanks, Lou.” Harry sighs in relief. He isn’t sure that this ranger Liam will take care of the guy any better than Harry had, but at least someone who’s likely to be trained on what to do in this situation will take over. It makes him feel a bit better, at least.

“No problem, H.”

“I feel really bad,” Harry says without thinking, subconsciously holding down the button while he does so.

“And why’s that?”

“‘Cause he was  _ crying _ and he could have been hurt or something and all I did was give him  _ directions _ .”

“Listen, H,” Louis starts, and Harry thinks he hears him say something else but he gets cut off, and then restarts a few minutes later. “There wasn’t anything you _ could _ have done. Like, I get it, it’s heartbreaking to think  _ what if _ he’s out here stranded and  _ what if _ all his friends abandoned him or something, so just don’t think it, okay? Just assume that he was listening to some sad tunes and got a bit worked up. I  _ promise _ Liam will get to him ASAP and I’ll tell you whatever he tells me, alright?”

“Alright,” Harry agrees. He feels like his mother has just given him advice, ‘cause he’s feeling that familiar sense of comfort with a subtle hint of  _ but I’m still worried. _

“I’m gonna call Liam now, so stay quiet a while unless you need something else. I’m gonna be off the line.”

“Roger.” Harry slowly lays his radio down on his desk and sighs, staring off at the tops of trees.

It’s two days later on the one week anniversary of Harry’s arrival to Umpqua when his radio is screeching at him at dawn. The air is still chilly when Harry sits up and looks around, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Wake up!” Louis is yelling into the receiver, “Styles, come on, get up!”

“I’m up, I’m up,” Harry groans, shuffling over to the receiver even though he knows Louis can’t hear him.

“Yeah,” he says to Louis, “What is it? What do you want?”

“Supply drop time, Styles. Get out there before someone takes your rations.”

“Before-- what?” This isn’t Harry’s finest moment, really. He’s still half asleep, he doesn’t think he knows where his clothes are, and he has no idea what’s going on.

“The  _ supply drop _ ,” Louis insists. “Every week Liam brings in little care packages for me and my lookouts. He delivers mine directly to me because I get perks, but yours is in that supply box a few miles north of you, it’s like right between our towers on your map.”

“And I  _ have  _ to go?”

“Well  _ shit _ mate, if you want your food to rot, then no, but if you want everything fresh and if you want to get it before the heat ruins anything cold, you better go.”

“Fine,” Harry mumbles, stumbling around while pulling on shorts and sweatpants over top, then t-shirts and hoodies to keep himself sheltered from the morning air.

“Also, with our guest in the woods with our brilliant password, you might lose out on your supplies.”

“Guest?”

“Niall. That’s the blond’s name. Liam says he’ll be staying the summer with us.”

“Oh,” Harry says plainly as he sorts through his pack and slings it over his shoulder. “That’s cool.”

“Sure it is, so you better get down there. He might pick and choose what he wants, you never know.”

Maybe that scares Harry a  _ little bit _ ‘cause he didn’t really bring much more than a few cans of soup and some energy bars when he first arrived, and maybe that helps him get going down the hill his tower’s on, marching north towards his supplies.

He clears two miles of the trek in 20 minutes (mostly thanks to the fact that it’s downhill), but by the time he gets to the supplies, he sees someone hunched in front of the box, fiddling with the lock.

“Hey!” He shouts as he approaches, sounding a bit louder than he means to considering the way the person jumps--Harry realizes it’s Niall by the time he gets there since he’s the only other person who should have the combination.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Niall groans when Harry gets closer, “fuck, dude.”

“Sorry,” Harry says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck while Niall pulls the lock off  and opens the top of the crate.

“It’s a good thing he wrote my name on it or else I wouldn’t know which one to take,” Niall mumbles to fill the silence while lifting his box.

“You have a long walk, don’t you? Looks a bit heavy…”

“I’m fine,” Niall shrugs, “it’s not that bad.”

“Okay,” Harry nods, watching Niall as he, in turn, watches Harry. They stand there like that for a bit until Harry unintentionally breaks into a smile and looks away.

“Sorry,” he says, shrugging off his bag so he can re-pack the items in his box for an easier way to carry them all.

“For what?” Niall asks, and Harry doesn’t look up to see that he’s smiling too.

“I dunno. Bugging you, I guess. Sending a ranger after you.”

“I figured you’d done that. It’s fine, I mean, I’m getting supplies out of it, so it’s no biggie… Thanks, actually, I guess.”

Niall looks as sheepish as he sounds, Harry notices when he stands back up.

“You’re welcome, then,  _ I guess _ ,” he responds, playfully teasing part of Niall’s phrase.

“Well, I  _ guess _ ,” Niall says with a slight smile, teasing Harry back, “I’m gonna head off. See you around.”

He nods his head in place of a wave since his arms are preoccupied with his supply box, so Harry waves enough for the both of them, not stopping until Niall has walked away and Harry’s sure he isn’t going to trip and drop his supplies.

He has a leisurely walk back to his tower, really observing his surroundings for the first time. Harry’s a little mad at himself for not stopping to enjoy the scenery while he was hiking his way in initially, or any day after, but at the base of his hill just as the sun is starting to crest over the trees, he thinks about what Louis said about giving the forest a chance, thinks maybe he’ll do just that.

x

“I think I’ll go exploring today.”

“Where to this time, Chief?” Louis asks, letting the transmission go just long enough for Harry to hear him lean back in his squeaky chair.

“Shouldn’t I be the one calling  _ you _ chief? Since you’re the boss?”

“Okay, alright,” Louis says in a tone that Harry likes to imagine accompanies an eye-roll. “Where’re you off to, though, H?”

“Musick Cave,” Harry says carefully, tip-toeing over this unmentioned territory. He isn’t sure if he’s allowed to go in there and he’d much rather go and get told not to do it again than never get to go in the first place.

“I thought that was locked off?”

“Well I was there a few days ago, like right after the supply drop,” Harry says with a relieved sigh, “and the key was actually in the cache just downstream so I’ve been planning on going in today.”

“The one near Toketee? I used to have a lookout out that way, I always knew they were hiding something from me. Tell me what it’s like in there if you get any signal at all.”

Harry heads downhill, clutching his jacket close to his chest against the morning chill. His pack is light since it’s filled with only ropes, a few granola bars, and a bottle that he plans on filling when he gets to the stream near the mouth of the cave.

It takes him half an hour to get to the general area of the cave, and another few minutes to remember which way around the falls he went to find it. (He might go in the wrong direction and have to backtrack, but there’s no shame in that.)

The mouth of the cave is as small as he remembers, and he has to duck to get in initially, but then it opens up above his head. There’s a rusted gate blocking the entrance to the actual cave to his right, and up above to the left is another opening to the cave. It’s in the path of the sun, so a few rays manage to slip past the rocks and come in, lighting the floor in front of Harry as though he’s in a spotlight.

He doesn’t think too much of it and goes instead to the gate, digging in his pockets for the key. It’s equally as rusted, really, and he’s surprised nothing snaps or breaks or fails when he turns the key and forces the long-idle door to open.

Harry leaves the gate open but keeps the key with him incase it somehow gets closed behind him. He doesn’t think it’ll happen, but he’s always cautious.

Well, he usually is.

It only takes him a few minutes to jump down into a pit of the cave, wanting to explore the little bit of corridor that he can see from the top, ultimately getting himself stuck and ruining his “careful” track record.

When he realizes that there isn’t some long, beautiful path in this section of the cave, he goes back to the wall of rock he jumped off of and quickly realizes that he forgot to do several things, the first being to realize exactly how far the jump was, and the second being to tie a rope at the top so he could climb back out.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mumbles, looking around for anything that he could put at the base of the wall to stand on, or anything he could climb onto that happened to be nearby the ridge he needs to grab onto. It’s dim in the cave but not quite dark, and Harry can tell that he’s fallen into a trap with very little possibility of getting out.

He only panics for a minute or two, trying desperately to climb back up, but in those couple of minutes all he manages to do is run into the wall a few times and throw his pack up to the top of the ledge after thinking it’s weighing him down. He realizes immediately when it doesn’t come back down that he could now starve to death or die of thirst since his only food and drink is in that bag that he cannot reach.

As he starts to  _ actually _ panic, to hyperventilate and allow tears to spring in his eyes, he kicks something on the ground and through the filtered light, he can tell it’s his radio.

“Thank fuck,” he mumbles, picking it up. The screen lights up slightly when he switches it on to make sure it didn’t somehow break when he dropped it, but of course it’s fine--these things are nearly indestructible, Louis told him once.

The signal is fucked down in the cave, and Harry struggles catching a lear wave, raising his radio and lowering it and moving it along every wall in this little death trap trying to get anything but static. He gets excited when he finally hears something come through.

“Uh…? You okay in there, mate? You’ve had your call on for like five minutes.”

“Louis! Lou, can you hear me?”

“Hardly,” Louis responds, and there’s a bit of static on his end as well, but it isn’t as awful as what Harry must sound to him. “How’s the cave?”

“Well, uh… about that.” Harry sounds as sheepish as he feels, and Louis groans over the line before speaking.

“You didn’t.”

“I got stuck.”

_ “You didn’t _ ,” Louis insists, “don’t tell me I’m hearing this.”

“I’m sor--”

“Harry, you are  _ so _ lucky that Liam’s out hiking today. I’m not supposed to let lookouts go in the cave ‘cause they  _ always  _ get stuck, so anyone besides Liam would have probably gotten us fired,” he sighs. “I’ll call him, just stay put. You’re not in any danger are you?”

“No, just...low, I guess.”

It takes a few minutes for Louis to say anything else, and in that time Harry has given up on climbing back up the smooth surface and is instead busying himself kicking away some pebbles and small rocks so he can sit down on the cave floor.

“Liam…” the transmission crumbles, “...hour. Lucky…” Harry manages to hear. It’s enough for him to stop worrying about starving to death; he can last an hour without his pack. He doesn’t  _ want _ to, and he wishes he hadn’t been so stupid, but he’s okay with it. He’s accepted it, at least. This is how it is.

Harry leans his head against the cave wall and closes his eyes. He counts to the rhythm of water dripping somewhere above him until he falls asleep. An indeterminate amount of time later, someone calling his name startles him awake.

“Harry? You down there, buddy?”

Harry turns his head to look in the direction of the voice and gets a flashlight beam in his face. He hopes this person is Liam and not just someone else who happened to hear his cry to help over the radio.

“Yeah,” Harry says, standing up, raising his hand to cover his eyes. “Turn that off, will you? You’re blinding me.”

“Sorry,” Liam says, turning the flashlight to the ground around Harry. “There’s nothing to climb on, huh? Do you have any rope?”

“In my bag, yeah,” Harry sighs, putting his hands on his hips while looking up, trying to will his eyes to adjust to the darkness again after being exposed to such a bright light so suddenly.

“Where’s tha-- oh. Here it is,” Liam says with a chuckle. The light is turned off of the ground around Harry and instead is used to aide Liam in digging through Harry’s rope for a few ties and hooks.

“There’s a good looking rock up here. I’ll tie you off and you can climb up, okay?”

“Yeah, sure,” Harry nods, finally able to make out Liam’s silhouette as he kneels at Harry’s bag and starts pulling things out. Harry hears some hooks clinking together, the distinct sound of rope being knotted tightly with itself, and the sound of a long strand falling against the wall with the bottom just plopping onto the ground below.

“There you are, then,” Liam says, “I’ll hold the rope up here just in case the tie slips, but you should be good to go.”

“Thank you,” Harry calls up, tugging on the rope for himself to make sure it is actually secure, and it is. He reaches up about at face level to hold the rope tightly in his hands, then he leans back and puts one foot on the rock face, then the other, and slowly he climbs his way up. When he gets to where he can reach the top, Liam offers a hand and helps pull Harry up the rest of the way.

“Nice to meet you, by the way,” Liam laughs softly. “If you plan on coming back in here you might as well leave the tie.”

“Nah,” Harry shakes his head, dusting off his hands by smacking them together. “No way in hell I’m coming back in here,” he laughs, and Liam laughs along.

“I don’t blame you. This place creeps me out so I’ve never really come in here.” Liam shines his light on the hook of the rope and tie while Harry starts taking it apart, winding the rope up on his arm.

“Why does it creep you out?” Harry chuckles, turning to glance up at him.

“Well… It might be haunted. No one has reported it since it’s blocked off, and I just don’t wanna be the one who finds out.”

_ “Haunted?!” _ Harry asks, laughing. “You’re kidding!”

“I’m not!” Liam hisses softly, glancing around like he’s afraid something will pop out at him. “Look, man, you never know. There was this kid a few years ago--”

“Let me guess, he saw a ghost?”

_ “No _ ,” Liam says, “he...he came in here and he fell and he...passed.”

Harry’s face falls as the laughter is immediately taken from him.

“Oh, shit, I had no--”

“It’s fine. I mean, it’s incredibly sad ‘cause his lousy parents didn’t really seem upset, but we had no reason to bring up a case about it or anything. All I’m saying is, I don’t wanna be around to hear or see a ghost kid wandering around.”

“I don’t blame you,” Harry mumbles, packing away his ropes. “God, that’s really fucked up…”

“It is, yeah. When Louis told me you were stuck in the caves I was afraid I’d have to fill out another accident report, but you’re okay, right? So we’ll just...keep this quiet? From the bosses?”

“Of course, man. Don’t worry about it. Thank you again for coming out here to get me.”

“It was no problem,” Liam smiles widely, clapping Harry on the shoulder as they start towards the exit. “I was already out here checking in on Niall.”

“The guy who’s camping out here, right?” Harry asks, locking the gate after he and Liam have passed through it. Liam hums and nods in response.

“I didn’t know people were allowed to camp this far in.”

“Well…” Liam trails off, and Harry looks over at him with a smirk.

“Another thing you don’t report then, huh?”

“Niall’s a friend of mine, yanno? We had some mutual friends so I saw him a bit throughout school, and then when I got this job he and his mates happened to be out here and I was a stupid, nervous noob and didn’t kick them out, so they came back every year and I just… never bothered to tell anyone. I almost did this year, though, but it wouldn't really do anything at this point since most of them are already gone.”

They stop at the banks of the flowing creek that comes from Toketee Falls as Liam talks, allowing Harry to dip his face in cool water and fill up his bottle.

“What made you almost turn them in this year?” he asks as he stands back up, wiping his wet hands on his shorts.

“Well… so, Louis told me when you found Niall out there all alone, right? Turns out he was alone ‘cause he proposed to his boyfriend but he said no. I don’t know if you saw them before they left, but… Zayn was a real dick. It doesn’t surprise me at all that he said no. I knew he was a skeezeball and I should have told Niall, but it wasn’t my business you know?”

“Yeah, I know,” Harry nods. “That sucks, though… So Niall’s just… staying then?”

“Yeah,” Liam shrugs. “He and Zayn live together a few hours south of here, so he didn’t wanna have to hike out and drive all the way home and then immediately have to start moving his entire life away.”

Harry chuckles bitterly ‘cause it seems almost like Liam’s talking about Harry himself now, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t blame him, though. I wouldn’t wanna go back to a shitty relationship either. Besides, Umpqua is beautiful and you could spend years out here and never get tired of the view,” Liam smiles widely, looking over at Harry, and Harry knows he speaks from experience.

“It is really nice,” Harry admits softly, looking at the Falls as they approach.

“It is,” Liam agrees. “So I’ve gotta head south to go back to the ranger station. It was nice meeting you, Harry. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, you too, Liam.”

Harry tries not to dwell on the abrupt end of conversation as he goes east. It wasn’t awkward, not really, and he knew Liam would have to leave sooner or later, but maybe since he was genuinely questioning his life earlier, he feels like he can’t, or rather doesn’t  _ want _ to be alone.

“I kinda, like… learned Niall’s backstory,” he says into his walkie talkie. “Like in those movies where you spend the whole thing  _ not _ wondering why the villain was an asshole, but they tell you about it anyway. Except I guess it’s not really like that ‘cause I actually was kinda wondering about why he’s out here.”

“Congratulations, H,” Louis says, sounding out of breath. “You’ve unlocked a backstory.”

Harry tries to say something else, but Louis doesn’t respond. He thinks it’s some sort of sign, but he isn’t sure what it means.

The days really fly by, Harry finds. He’s gotten used to isolation by the one month mark of his stay in the forest. He still feels lonely sometimes when he’s just up in his tower all alone for a long time without having anyone to talk to, but Louis usually doesn’t mind humoring him for a while so Harry can get that bit of human contact he needs. He thought that surely he would be going stir crazy by now, but he’s starting to find comfort in the tower, especially since Liam has started bringing him books to read and paper for his typewriter (since Harry used his entire stash in the first couple of weeks trying to write down all the crazy thoughts he was having).

He kind of feels...at home.

“Harold!” Louis yells into the receiver, startling Harry thoroughly. He clutches his shirt above his heart for a moment while he calms himself before picking up his radio.

“You scared the shit out of me. That’s not nice, you know.”

“Poor thing.  _ So, _ Liam and I have been talking. We’re gonna have a party. My tower is on your map, come up here.”

“We’re-- _ what?” _ Harry asks. He feels nervous all of a sudden. As much as he does like a bit of human contact, he’s not exactly a fan of  _ parties _ ‘cause he doesn’t really fit in very well with people he doesn’t know, and he’s usually the dork that sits in the corner alone the whole time.

“Yeah, it’ll be great, just the few of us. Come on, party starts at sunset, so get your ass over here.”

“Okay,” Harry says, holding his walkie talkie in a sweaty palm. He tries to disregard how his hands tremble when he goes through his clothes, throwing everything every which way trying to decide what to wear. He shouldn’t be nervous about meeting his boss and seeing Liam again, but he  _ is _ and it might have something to do with the little bitty crush he might have on Louis...or something like that.

“By the way, it’s just Harry,” he adds after he’s gotten dressed.

“Learn something new every day,” Louis chuckles. Harry hears someone talking in the background of his transmission and wonders how big this party’s going to be, and it makes him reconsider wearing his hiking boots and cargo shorts. (He thinks maybe he’ll settle for running shoes and jeans for the sake of a good first impression.)

It takes Harry a bit longer to arrive than he thought it would have, and he blames it on the fact that he had to be a bit more careful where he stepped because of his shoes that weren’t made for rough terrain and jeans that felt like they could split at the seams if he moved his legs too far apart.

When he does finally arrive, the first thing he sees is someone sitting on a bench, tipping a bottle back into their mouth. It’s alcohol, Harry can tell immediately, and he thinks he might really want some of that to calm his nerves.

The person’s head raises and they see Harry. He starts to open his mouth to say somethin, but they beat him to it. He recognizes the voice immediately and realizes he’s face to face with Louis, and he’s gotta admit, he looks like his “type.”

“Woah, didn’t know you were an asher, H.”

“I’m--” Harry pouts, looking down at his clothes--black t-shirt, black jeans, all black Converse--and well, Louis isn’t exactly wrong, but Harry wouldn’t quite say he’s that far gone with his affinity for dark shades. “I’m just… it gets cold when it gets dark, yanno? I just happened to  _ have-- _ ”

“I’m just pulling your leg, man,” Louis laughs, eyes lighting up and crinkling around the edges. Harry thinks he’s more than a little cute as he looks down at the slightly shorter man. If his cheeks weren’t red already, they probably are now ‘cause he’s acknowledging these thoughts that he shouldn't be thinking.

“Liam’s gonna be here soon, he went out to get Niall.”

“Okay,” Harry nods, sliding his hands into his pockets, trying to act nonchalant, “that’s cool.”

Louis’s about to say something else when they both hear footsteps on a creaky board above their heads. Harry sees her first since he’s facing the tower--a tall, thin girl slowly walking down the stairs balancing cups and drinks in her arms. Louis looks over his shoulder and jumps, running to meet her at the base of the stairs.

“Let me help you with that, love--I was gonna come up.”

“I thought I could get it,” she says, smiling at him. He smacks a kiss on her cheek and then one on her nose before going over to the picnic table and more-or-less dropping everything in his arms.

Harry realizes now that she’s probably the person Louis has been talking to whenever he says something that Harry isn’t meant to hear--she’s probably his  _ girlfriend _ , and one of the rules that Liam allows Louis to break ‘cause he’s got a big heart. Typically no one is allowed to bring a guest, but for  _ Louis _ \--

“Hi,” the girl says shyly to Harry, “I’m Eleanor.”

“Hello,” Harry says back, staring at her curiously. She smiles politely in his gaze while Louis rejoins them, tucking his arm protectively around her waist.

“You two haven’t met before, right? Not radioing my girl while I’m sleeping are you, H?” They laugh, but none as hard as Louis. Even though they all know he’s joking, there’s still something serious underlying in his tone.

“No,” Harry chuckles, turning his head to the ground, trying to think of something else to do besides just stand there like an idiot, “kinda had a feeling she was there,” Harry addresses to Louis, “‘cause sometimes I could hear you in the background,” he then says to Eleanor, making her smile sheepishly, “but I didn’t really think anything of it. It’s none of my business, is it?”

“Good lad,” Louis says, jumping forward to pat Harry’s shoulder. “C’mon, let’s get drinking. The other two will be here soon, they wouldn’t want us waiting around for them.”

Eleanor’s smile doesn’t leave her face as she takes Louis’s hand when he reaches for hers. Harry’s seen these two touch more than he thinks he and his ex would touch in a week, and maybe he feels jealous but he tells himself he doesn’t. His heart is doing something weird like it’s gonna thump right out of his chest, but he thinks it’s a happy thud, thinks it’s because he’s never seen such a happy couple up close.

“Over here, H. What do you want to drink?”

Harry shuffles across the gravel lot towards the picnic table. It’s covered in alcohol of all sorts, shit that Harry doesn’t even know the name of, so he just shrugs.

“Just this, I guess,” he says, picking up a beer bottle and something to open it with. “I don’t drink much honestly.”

“Do you smoke?” Louis asks, pulling a baggie out of his pocket, “‘cause I got you if you do. Or not, that’s fine too.”

Harry shrugs again, “I have but I dunno if I wanna out here. I’d probably get lost and fall off a cliff or something.”

Louis laughs and tucks the weed back into his pocket; he’s easy going, Harry’s noticed, even more so than he was over the air.

“I’m gonna get a fire started,” Louis says to both Harry and Eleanor.

“Fire?” Harry asks, “Isn’t that, like, the entire reason we have a job? To make sure there  _ aren’t _ fires out here?”

_ “Yes _ ,” Louis smirks, going to the center of the lot where Harry realizes now that there’s a circle of rocks, “but for one, it’s a Saturday night so no one besides us is looking, and two, it’s just gonna be a little controlled fire here on a non-burnable surface with three professionals--that’s including you.”

“Oh,” Harry nods. Another broken rule--one a bit more dangerous than living with your girlfriend or letting a friend camp in the valley, but one Harry isn’t complaining about.

“Wait, sh, sh, shh,” Louis says suddenly when Harry starts to say something else.

“Is that…  _ Liam _ !” Louis yells, exaggerating the syllables and dragging them out. Liam comes jogging up the stairs towards them moments later with a dopey smile on his face.

_ “Ahhh _ ,” Liam shouts, catching Louis when he rushes towards him and jumps like he’s going to attack. Harry actually thinks he might, but Louis lands softly in front of Liam and reaches up to ruffle what little hair he has. They seem like the best of friends, and Harry wonders if he would act the same with them if he had been working here as long as them.

Niall comes up from the stairs behind them and Harry feels momentary relief at the prospect of not being the lone man out, but then Louis greets Niall in a similar way and Harry notices that Niall doesn’t seem nervous or sad like he thought he would. He remembers then that Niall has been here before, he’s probably been to parties with Liam and Louis while out here, or maybe they’re just different people--very,  _ very _ different people.

“We’re going to get kindling, lads. You can stay and keep the boss company,” Louis says to Niall and Harry, referencing Eleanor with a cheeky smile. “There are chairs upstairs, some old newspaper and shit we can burn, get that set up for us, will ya?”

“Sir yes Sir,” Niall barks jokingly, jogging towards the stairs that lead up into Louis’s tower--there are significantly less than those at Harry’s, he notices, as in Harry has to climb four flights, and Louis has one.

“Are you coming?” Niall asks, getting Harry’s attention. “I’ll need a hand getting the chairs.”

“Oh,” Harry nods, going towards him. “Yeah, sorry.”

They climb the stairs at a moderate pace, Harry being careful not to go too quickly and run into Niall’s back. He still feels a bit awkward around the mysterious lad and doesn’t think accidentally faceplanting into his ass would be a great way to get to know him.

“I don’t see them,” Niall mumbles, looking through the glass windows surrounding Louis’s temporary home.

“Are they outside?” Harry asks. He’s more familiar with the tower and knows the wonderful storage space that the wrap-around desk creates, and after turning the corner past Louis’s door, he finds a stack of fold up chairs.

“Ah, yeah, they’re over here,” he says to Niall, turning to make sure he’s got his attention.

“That’s ace.” Niall comes towards Harry and grabs two of the chairs, leaving Harry to carry the last three. He considers that Eleanor may sit in Louis’s lap, but he doesn’t like to assume two people’s dynamic and carries the extra chair anyway.

“I’ll come back up to get the fire starters,” Niall offers as they go down the stairs carefully, “since you’re carrying the extra chair.”

“Are you sure?” Harry asks on reflex, “It’s no big deal. I could get them if you want.”

“No, really, I got it.” Niall says as he gently lays the chairs down on the ground. Harry sees Eleanor come into view out of the corner of his eye. As Niall disappears upstairs, she unfolds the chairs he left behind. Harry follows suit.

“Thank you,” she says to Harry as he unfolds the last one.

“It’s nothin’,” Harry responds, “just some chairs, yanno?”

“Yeah,” she laughs softly, “I kinda meant for not telling a ranger that I’m here, though. Some of the lookouts in the past haven’t been so nice, so...thanks.”

“Oh,” Harry smiles, shrugging slightly, “really, it’s nothing. I don’t see the point in ruining your summer.”

“Not everyone is as cool as you are, H. When I came out here with Louis the first time, after his mom died, the lookout in charge of him was a huge stickler for rules and would report him for anything and everything he did. It was really shitty. He had a rough winter, he didn’t need a rough summer too, so I tried to come with him, but we only made it a few  _ days _ before a ranger came knocking at the door threatening to fire him if I didn’t leave.”

“What the fuck?” Harry asks in shock. He doesn’t understand how taking someone along could be such a big deal so he’s genuinely surprised to hear Eleanor’s story--he’s also surprised to hear that Louis’s mom died, but he doesn’t think it’s his place to ask about it, especially not as Louis and Liam start rounding over the hill with arms full of wood. He just thinks it’s another backstory unlocked and continues on with unfolding the last chair.

“We’re back,” Louis announces loudly. Liam drops his arms full of wood into the fire pit while Louis drops all his to the side. Louis puts his hands on his hips and is in the process of taking a breath to prepare for whatever he’s going to say next when Niall comes bounding down the stairs with a stack of newspapers and a lighter.

“There you are,” Louis says instead, lowering his hands and lightening his expression, “give me that, I’m ready to get this shit started!”

After Liam carefully rearranges the wood to make it stand in a cone shape, Louis lights a wad of newspaper beneath them and repeats a few times until Eleanor thinks to fill the open space between the branches with small, dry twigs. The fire catches after the guys take her advice, and the whole group cheers and claps.

Harry thinks these are his kind of people--ones who get unashamedly excited at simple things, and who know how to have a good time without crossing boundaries.

The night goes smoothly and quickly, a lot quicker than Harry expected, actually. Maybe it’s ‘cause he keeps drinking as everyone else does, or maybe it’s ‘cause he finds that they--especially Niall--are all extremely good at holding Harry’s attention.

They’re on opposite sides of the campfire from each other in the beginning of the night, but the further they go, and as people get up to get more drinks or snacks or to piss in the woods, they seem to all move seats until Harry’s sitting close enough to Niall to hear him take breaths before he begins stories and to hear his tiny chuckles when someone teases him and he laughs to humor them.

Harry doesn’t want the night to end when it the fire burns down to glowing embers. He’s pretty sure that Eleanor has fallen asleep on Louis’s shoulder, and Liam’s yawned enough times in the past hour for Harry to never want to hear a yawn again.

“I’m going to head home,” Liam says while standing, “let’s do this again before the summer’s over.”

“Mhm,” Louis nods, petting his girlfriend’s hair gently. He turns to her and whispers something, and she raises her hand up to rub at her eyes. They’re going to go to bed, Harry guesses.

“I’ll be going too, then,” Niall says after Liam’s started down the stairs towards the bottom of the hill.

Harry groans as he stands and takes a second to catch his balance. “Well I guess that means I’m going too. Thanks for inviting me to this, this was cool.”

Louis chuckles and shrugs, but he still doesn’t say anything as Eleanor climbs off his lap and lets her hair hang into her face while she waits for Louis to stand too.

Harry wishes there was a railing along the stairs down Louis’s hill, but since the stairs are just planks of wood blocking the dirt from creating a real slope, he’ll have to forgive it. He’s got the hang of the steps, use one foot to carefully step down at the other to move forward between the wide gaps in between. He’s near the bottom when he almost knocks into Niall, who’s on his way up.

“My flashlight just fuckin’ died on me,” he huffs, flicking the button a few times as proof. “Do you think Louis has a spare?”

“Hm? I can-- I can walk you back if you want. You’re not  _ that _ far past my tower.”

“Are you sure, though? ‘Cause I can, like, just go get some batteries or something.”

“No,” Harry shakes his head, maybe for a little too long thanks to the alcohol in his system, “It’s dark and you might get turned around. I can walk you back, don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“Okay,” Niall says, shrugging, “what time is it, do you reckon?”

Harry doesn’t know, and he says so. Niall guesses it’s nearly one in the morning, and Harry almost tells him he knows how one in the morning feels, and it isn’t quite as lonely as this. He doesn’t, though.

They don’t talk much while they walk, mostly just mumbles of curses when one of them trips or thinks they’ve heard something run by. Harry can tell Niall’s completely tired out when they get back to his tent, and Harry’s almost tired enough to ask if he can stay the night ‘cause sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag seems better than hiking back a couple of miles to his tower.

But he goes.

Harry spends the next morning nursing a weak but persistent hangover, and then he spends the rest of his day writing about the night before. He doesn’t like to say he keeps a diary or a journal or anything, but for the longest time he’s taken pictures and written about some of his favorite memories so that he can look back on them when he gets old, or so that maybe his kids or his grandkids can have them. He just thinks it’s fun, and while out in the woods (mostly) all alone, you need a hobby to keep yourself from going crazy.

x

Harry’s accustomed to the sounds of the forest as he falls asleep--cicadas humming in vibrato, the occasional owl hooting or coyote howling, the odd rustle of branches as the wind blows. What he  _ isn’t _ used to hearing is the sound of footsteps pounding up the creaky stairs that wind around his home.

His eyes snap open when he realizes the noise and what it implies--he’s kicking frantically at his blankets and jumping out of bed moments later, looking for anything to defend himself with. His hands wrap around the crowbar he keeps on the kitchenette counter just as the person climbing his stairs rounds the final set, coming closer and closer to him. Harry takes a step closer to the door and  holds the crowbar like a bat over his shoulder, waiting for someone to try to come in.

“Stop!” he shouts in his most intimidating voice--he doesn’t feel nearly as scary as he sounds. His heart is pounding, arms shaking, but his feet are planted firm.

_ “Shit, _ ” the person exclaims back, “you scared the fuck out of me, H. It’s just me, don’t shoot.”

“Niall? What the fuck are you doing up here?”

Harry drops the crowbar and cringes when it bounces near his bare foot. He’s already embarrassed that he was about to attack, he’s glad he doesn’t have to be embarrassed for injuring himself too.

“I thought I saw a bear,” he mumbles quietly--so quietly that Harry can hardly hear him.

“A bear? You--”

“I thought I saw a bear, yeah. I heard some snuffling and growling around my camp and I think it was a bear and I got scared and I ran away ‘cause I’m a pansy.”

Harry finally realizes that Niall’s still standing on the outside of his room and they’re speaking through the open screen of his windows and door.

“You’re not a pansy just because you didn’t want to die tonight,” Harry says, opening the door wide to let Niall in. They can just make each other’s figures out in the moonlight--there isn’t a full moon, but there’s enough of a glow that they can see residual fear on both of their faces.

“Thanks, H. That’s comforting.”

“What else was I supposed to say? There  _ are _ bears here.”

_ “Thanks.” _

“I don’t have a spare bed,” Harry offers instead, closing the door behind Niall when he enters, “but if you don’t mind, we can share.”

“Your bed’s small though, innit?” Niall asks, and Harry can hear his shoes fall to the floor as Niall kicks them off. He’s surprised Niall has shoes on at all--if Harry thought he heard a bear, he would have ran away immediately, no matter what he was wearing. “Think there’ll be enough room?”

“Probably,” Harry shrugs. “I can sleep against the wall, won’t take too much space, you can have whatever’s left.”

“Deal,” Niall sighs, and Harry thinks he’s probably too tired to care about anything.

Harry slides the crowbar under the table in the corner as he turns back to the bed to make sure no one steps on it. He picks up the blanket he tangled before and spreads it out gently before raising it and sliding under--Niall follows suit. They soon find the bed is much smaller than they both expected. Niall’s chest ends up pressed to Harry’s bare back while Harry’s forehead rests against the cabin walls.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Niall whispers softly. His hand twitches against his on thigh where it rests as he tries to keep his arm flat and against himself rather than draping his arm over Harry’s waist.

“Mm,” Harry hums, “I really don’t mind, just wanna sleep. All cuddles welcome.”

“G’night, then,” Niall yawns. Neither of them say anything else, they just listen to the humming in the restless summer air and the sound of each other breathing as they fall asleep.

Harry wakes up in the morning with his face pressed against the wall still. The arm he was sleeping on is now asleep and tingling, and when he tries to move, he presses further into Niall’s chest.

Niall hums, and Harry feels an arm tighten around his waist. He knows that he should say something, that he should ask if Niall is awake or if he’s okay with what’s happening but he can’t bring himself to. He’s selfish, he wants the attention, ‘s been longing for it since he stopped getting it when he left Nick and he just  _ wants _ it so bad.

“Fuck,” Niall mumbles suddenly, releasing Harry from his grasp as he startles out of sleep. “Sorry, H.”

“No,” Harry mumbles, “It’s fine, you don’t have to…” He leaves it unsaid what Niall doesn’t have to do, and Niall wonders if maybe he means that he doesn’t have to stop, but he doesn’t let himself think of it while he looks around the room. He’s never been in the lookout tower before, and now that the sun’s up, he can see different views of the forest from each window on every side of the building. He’s in awe the same way Harry was the same time he saw the view. Harry thinks it’s cute as he turns over and looks up at him in the morning glow.

“Do you wanna go look for the bear?” Harry asks. He thinks his own voice sounds too harsh for the peace surrounding them. Niall shows no sign of feeling the same.

“The--oh, yeah. Yeah, we probably should...make sure it didn’t fuck up any of my stuff.”

Harry keeps watching Niall as he looks around, eyes darting from one window to the next.

“So,” Harry chuckles softly, “I can’t really get up until you do.”

“Oh, shit, right,” Niall says, shaking himself out of his trance, carefully peeling the blankets off of himself but leaving them on Harry just in case there’s something there that’s meant to be kept decent.

There isn’t, he notices as Harry gets up right after him. He  _ is _ only in his boxers, but it doesn’t matter at all, it’s not like Niall’s never been in the presence of someone in their underwear before.

“Have you seen any signs of bears around your camp?” Harry asks while he gets dressed, “Like, have you seen any prints in the past few days or heard anything else or noticed any trees scratched up?”

“I mean,” Niall shrugs, lacing up his shoes, “I haven’t noticed anything, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, yanno?”

It’s funny to Harry how people can say something simple without realizing there could be a deeper implication. Yeah, he does know what Niall means, both literally and what he  _ wants _ it to mean.

“We better go check, then.”

There aren’t any bears at Niall’s camp, Harry decides. He circles the camp a third time just to be sure, but there aren’t any signs at all--no scratches on trees, no scat, and nothing from his supplies are disturbed.

“I kinda feel stupid,” Niall says bashfully, scratching the back of his neck while looking down at the ground as he toes at a rock embedded in the dirt.

“You shouldn’t,” Harry says kindly. “Really it genuinely is better to be safe than sorry. If you think there’s one around again, you can come back up. I won’t bite any worse than the bear.”

They both laugh--Harry can tell Niall is only laughing to humor him, but it makes him happy anyway.

“I’d make you breakfast or somethin’ if I could,” Niall says after the laughter subsides and they’re stood staring at each other. “I don’t have anything though besides, like, granola bars, maybe some bread.”

“It’s about the same as what I have then,” Harry shrugs, but he’s smiling kindly so Niall doesn’t feel like it’s any sort of problem.

“You can still stay, though--if you want.” Niall crosses his arms over his chest and shrugs one shoulder nonchalantly. It’s more obvious than he’d like for it to be that he’s lonely out in the woods with noone to talk to. Luckily for him, Harry feels the same.

“Okay,” he says, looking around for something to sit on. He rolls a log over across from the fold-out chair that he assume Niall will sit in, stands it upright, and sits on the flat stump.

“I don’t really know much about you,” Harry says while Niall sits across from him. “What do you do?”

“Like, for work? I’ve been playing shows around Salem and Portland, do some stuff up in Seattle. I work on a radio show sometimes too, usually for like a summer seasonal thing, but obviously I won’t be doing that this year since I’m here.”

“Do you live around Salem? Isn’t that a few hours from here?”

Harry can’t say he’s all too familiar with the capital, but he knows enough to know that it’s in another direction than the national park and forest they’re in.

“Well, yeah like two and a half maybe, but I’ve never minded the drive. I’ve always liked Umpqua a bit better than Mt. Hood, so it’s worth it. Less people, better staff, yanno?”

Harry chuckles softly and nods.

“Mt. Hood’s alright, but I am starting to like Umpqua quite a bit more--I know what you mean. I live like an hour south of here so the drive wasn’t  _ that _ bad, especially not compared to yours.”

“What do  _ you _ do, then? Outside of being a lookout?” Niall asks, turning the attention onto Harry.

“I haven’t done much of anything, if I’m honest. My, um...my roommate had a really good job and he owned the house that we lived in, so I never really needed to work.”

“And he didn’t mind?” Niall looks surprised, almost a bit confused. He can’t tell that Harry’s being vague and not exactly giving the full story, but at this time, it doesn’t really seem like it’s necessary.

“Not really, no. He liked being the breadwinner.”

“If that works for you, then more power to you, man.”

They lose track of time talking to each other. They’re mostly just shooting the bull, finding anything and everything to comment on. Harry finds out that Niall’s family is Irish but his parents moved to America before he was born, Harry gives that his grandma had a British accent, but he couldn’t tell if it was just the old American style or if she was actually from the UK, and he never bothered to ask.

He thinks Niall’s cute--really, really cute, and he’s a bit annoyed with himself for getting on with him so well. He doesn’t think there’s a chance between them, not with Nick still on his mind, not with the possibility he’ll come back, but he can't stop himself from thinking of Niall anyway.

x

Harry isn’t sure why all of a sudden he’s started running into Niall so often. Sometimes he sees him just in passing, sometimes he sees him up close and personal--well, he’s seen him several times  _ up close and personal _ lately, the first time of which happened while he’s on his way to Musick Cave for the second time.

Harry  _ hadn’t _ really intended on visiting the caves again after he got stuck the first time, but he  _ has _ been thinking that it’s a shame he didn’t get to explore more before he needed help out. He can’t get himself to stop thinking about it, and he hasn’t heard from Louis in three days--the longest he’s ever gone without hearing from him--so he decides to call in to seek guidance.

“I’ve been thinking about going to the cave again,” he says into the radio, “Is that a bad idea?”

“He says yes,” Eleanor answers after a moment. Harry’s almost confused because for a moment he forgot that she’s staying with him--she’s usually so quiet that there isn’t even a trace of her when he speaks with Louis. “He’s downstairs smoking, but he says yes, that’s a bad idea.”

“Oh,” Harry chuckles. He wonders if Eleanor would have answered the call had they not met a few days prior.  _ Probably not _ , he thinks,  _ she probably would have walked the radio down to Louis. _ “Well tell him I’m going to do it anyway. I won’t get stuck this time, I promise.”

She doesn’t hesitate before saying,

“We hope not.”

And so he treks out to the cave, taking the same path he did last time along the wide creek that leads west from his tower, past Niall’s campsite.

When Harry gets to Toketee falls, that’s when he runs into Niall. He sees him before he hears him, rather than the other way around. As in, Harry realizes that Niall is naked beneath the spray of the waterfall because of the sunlight gleaming off his pale skin before he manages to hear his soft voice drifting past the roar of the falling water.

Harry only realizes that he’s staring when Niall turns around and yells in surprise, clenching his arms against his chest like that will make him a bit more modest.

“Fuck, sorry!” Harry yells, covering his eyes. He can hear Niall laughing loud and proud at that, and when he peeks through his fingers he can see that Niall’s head is thrown back and his hands are clutching his belly.

“Are you showering?!” Harry asks, stepping a bit closer to the water’s edge.

“Maybe…” Niall drawls mischievously, running his hand through a pile of soapy bubbles that sit on the surface of the water around his thighs.

“Sure,  _ maybe _ ,” Harry copies, “but maybe  _ just in case _ , can you be careful with the soap? I think I drink from this stream and soap isn’t the best flavor, yanno?”

Niall starts laughing again at this, and playfully shouts “what, not a fan of Irish Spring?”

“Not for drinking, no,” Harry chuckles.

“No problem, H.”

Harry raises one hand in a wave before going off towards Musick. When he leaves a few hours later, the water is clear and it’s as if Niall hadn’t been there at all. It’s kind of lonely.

x

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Bear Incident, now that Harry thinks about it. He remembers that the moon wasn’t so bright on that night, but last night when he lost track of time and sat around Maidu lake with Niall well into the morning, he could still see well enough to make his way back to his tower without a flashlight.

He honestly can’t explain why he’s been out so much lately. Or, well, maybe he could if he stops ignoring the fact that the more often he sees Niall, the more often he wants to see him  _ again _ .

Now isn’t the time he admits that.

He never  _ plans _ to see Niall, it always just kind of…happens. Now, for instance, Harry didn’t  _ know _ that Niall would be swimming in a deep part of the wide creek between his lookout and Musick cave, but here he is, splashing around and waving excitedly to get Harry’s attention.

“Hey,” Harry laughs, waving back. He goes to the bank of the creek and kneels down as Niall comes closer. He swims as far as he can until the ground becomes too high, then he walks until he’s a few feet from Harry, and then Harry realizes that he isn’t just swimming, he’s skinny dipping.

“What is it with people and swimming naked?” he asks. “You’re not the first person I’ve caught this summer.” He says it and feels his cheeks getting warm. He makes sure to keep his eyes on Niall’s face while he laughs and throws his head back.

“I dunno, man,” Niall laughs, “It’s fun! Haven’t you ever done it?”

“I mean… yeah, but like, in a pool when I knew that no one would see me, not in the middle of a  _ forest _ .”

“In the middle of a  _ forest _ where the only person who will catch you is a  _ lookout _ who doesn’t  _ care _ . Am I right?”

“I guess…?” Harry trails off.

“And since  _ you’re _ the lookout that keeps catching people skinny dipping, there will be no one to catch  _ you _ doing it.”

_ Well, fuck, _ Harry thinks, _ he’s got a point. _

“I’m right!” Niall cheers, seeing the look of accepted defeat on Harry’s face. “It’s fuckin’ hot today, but the water is nice and cool. Since no one’s gonna catch you, why don't you jump in?”

“Well,” Harry shrugs, toeing at the ground, “I was actually gonna--”

“Come in here and join me, right? ‘Cause everything else can wait ‘cause everything else is inanimate and can’t move, but your pale friend can only stay in this creek for so long before he has to go hide in his tent for the rest of the day.” Niall flashes Harry this cheesy, crooked grin, and Harry can’t bring himself to say no.

“Yeah,” he smiles, shaking his head with a little chuckle as he slides his pack off his shoulders and onto the ground. “It’s like you took the words right out of my mouth.”

Niall cheers again, hollering and throwing his arms up into the air while Harry crouches down to untie his hiking boots and pull them off. He isn’t paying attention when there’s a big splash, and when he looks back up, the water is disturbed where Niall has fallen beneath the surface.

Harry makes quick work of getting undressed, and after he peels his boxers off his legs and takes the first step into the water, he hears Niall whistle at him from a few yards away.

“Oh fuck off,” Harry chuckles, rolling his eyes as he carefully wades into the water, making sure he doesn’t step on anything that could hurt him.

_ “Je-sus, _ ” Niall exaggerates, “I’m going to  _ boil  _ by the time you even make yourself  _ decent _ .”

“Bit whiney, aren’t you?” Harry teases, not quite diving but not quite throwing himself the rest of the way into the water. Regardless of what froggy motion he might have just copied, he ends up shoulder-deep in the water with his legs folded beneath himself as he moves around.

“I mean,” Harry continues as he moves, “I take time out of my  _ incredibly busy _ schedule to stop and have a swim with you, and you just  _ nag _ and nag and nag!”

“Okay, airhead,” Niall rolls his eyes, forcing his arm through the water quickly to splash Harry. The latter stares open-mouthed and wide-eyed at Niall as the water drips off of his face, making his hair stick to his forehead and cheeks.

_ “Unbelieveable. _ ”

They stare at each other for a minute, Harry playing dumb, and Niall playing mean, before collapsing in laughter. It radiates through the forest and if there  _ are _ any bears around this part of Umpqua, they’ve either been woken up or scared off by the noise.

When their laughter calms, Harry turns onto his back and floats along the surface of the water, looking up towards the tops of the trees and the mountains in the not-so-far distance.

“This is really nice, actually,” he admits. “This is a really great place.”

“I thought so, too,” Niall says. He doesn’t sound like he thinks so anymore, and Harry would be willing to bet it’s because of what happened in May.

“I know you, like,” Harry says, voice getting soft, “just broke up with your boyfriend not that long ago, and I just wanna say that I, like…I know what it’s like, what it feels like right now. But you can’t let it ruin how you feel about this place.”

“Do you  _ really _ ?” Niall asks. There’s an edge to his voice like he doesn’t think Harry could actually understand.

Harry spares a glance towards him and sees that his expression is less than happy. Harry knows he’s probably overstepped a boundary that Niall isn’t ready to approach yet, but he doesn’t stop himself from continuing.

“I  _ do _ ,” Harry insists, “because I broke up with  _ my _ long-term boyfriend right before the summer started. Things had been going downhill for a long time and I thought he didn’t really care about me anymore. I told myself that if I got this job, I would leave him and tell him that if he really wants to be with me, he’ll come find me…he hasn’t yet, probably never will.”

“God, H,” Niall sighs. “Yeah, that…it’s  _ not _ the same, not really, but I guess you do know--love fucking sucks.”

“What, if you don’t mind my asking, happened…? Out here? ‘Cause like, I saw you with that guy, and then you were all alone… I mean, you don’t have to tell me!” Harry adds in quickly when Niall doesn’t seem even a  _ bit _ like he’s going to respond. “I just… I told you, and I haven’t really told anyone that… I just ran away, basically.”

“It’s okay, H,” Niall sighs. “I wish I could have done that--I mean, I basically have, but  _ Zayn _ went home, and I know he’s probably already told the whole town. God, I don’t even know what he’s done with my stuff.”

Harry rotates himself in the water just a bit so that he can look over at Niall without getting an eyeful of water.

“We’ve come out here every summer with our friends for like…five or six years now? And this year I thought that it would be a good idea to propose to him, and I was,” Niall pauses with a bitter chuckle,  _ “so _ fucking wrong.”

“So…he said no?”

“He didn’t just say  _ no _ , he did it in front of all of our friends, and he  _ laughed _ . Like…I knew it was a longshot ‘cause where are we gonna be allowed to get married?--but I didn’t think he would  _ break up _ with me.”

Harry doesn’t say anything--he doesn’t think he  _ can _ or  _ should. _ Niall’s story is worse than he thought it was gonna be, and he can’t help the sympathetic ache in his chest that he gets for him.

“Whatever,” Niall sighs, cupping water into his hands and then dumping it over his face, “shit happens, I guess.”

There’s an awkward lull in the conversation where neither of them quite know what to say or how to go on from there. Niall’s frantically trying to think of something to say to lighten the mood but nothing’s coming to mind, so Harry makes the first move, never the one to mind making a fool of himself.

“Think my dick’s going to get a sunburn if I keep doing this?”

“Oh my fucking  _ God, _ Harry!” Niall barks out with a loud laugh, and Harry smiles cheekily as he sits up, sinking his hips back down into the water.

“It’s just a question,” he shrugs.

Ultimately they decide that  _ yes _ , Harry’s dick would get a sunburn if it were laying out for too long, but also his belly around the shape of it would get a sunburn too. Harry thinks it’s never been so easy to talk about something so weird with someone, and if he would have asked, Niall would have said he felt the same way.

x

June 20th rolls around and Harry feels like every bit of progress he’s made in forgetting Nick has been erased. It would have been their eighth anniversary today had Harry not left.

Harry spends the morning writing, getting all his emotions onto paper and hoping that he doesn’t cry and smear the ink. He writes about when he noticed Nick didn’t seem to care about him anymore, when he thought Nick was sneaking around behind his back, when he realized things had to end. Harry recounts in as much detail as he can how hard it was for him to make the decision and how many times he hesitated and prolonged the relationship further and further.

Then Harry writes about Umpqua. He writes about how it seems to have saved him from a bad relationship and about how the opportunity to come here arose at just the right time to finally give him the courage to leave, about how he’s really reconnected with himself since coming out, and about how he’s connected with others--Louis, Liam, and especially Niall.

Harry loses track of time writing about Niall.

He starts by writing about Niall’s description as though he’s going to ever forget it--the blond tips that are growing out, the dark brown shadow all around the edges of his face, the dark blue eyes, and so on. Then he writes about how he met Niall and how he got to know him better. Before Harry knows it, he’s going into tiny little things about Niall like the way he walks with his hands balled together and how he pulls his shoulders back a little bit when he laughs.

He can’t help it, he just writes until it turns into broken poems about not knowing he was looking for anything until he found it and--

Oh.

Oh, this is new.

Harry thinks he’s in love.

The realization scares him, honestly. He’s only ever been in love with Nick before and he doesn’t know if this is even  _ really _ love or if he’s just lonely and projecting it onto Niall. Harry doesn’t  _ know _ and he hates that and he’s  _ scared _ of that ‘cause he knows he doesn’t want to lose track of Niall when the summer ends or any time before then, but he doesn’t know if he really knows what love is anymore.

Harry looks down at his hands as they rest sprawled out on the keys of his typewriter in disgust as though they’ve betrayed him in allowing him to voice the truth on paper. He stands quickly, knocking his chair over backward in the process.

“I think I need some fresh air,” he huffs to no one in particular. He stands his chair back up only to sit in it while lacing up his boots--had he already been wearing them, he probably would have left the chair on the ground until he could stand to revisit his writing desk again. Who knows how long that could have taken.

Harry wraps his lunch up in a t-shirt and ties the corners together so that nothing will fall out while he carries it. He didn’t feel like taking his whole pack, so he deals with the awkward hold he has on the bundle while he walks in whichever direction he feels like going. He tries not to think too hard about any twist or turn that he encounters in his trek, he merely walks until he gets tired.

When the time comes, he finds himself at the rocks above Toketee Falls that give it its height. He’s never been a fan of heights, so he may or may not head back the way he came for a few yards until he’s safely sat on a knee-high boulder facing the downward slope of the side of the hill.

Harry crosses his legs together and unbundles his t-shirt in his lap. The banana he’s been carrying seems to have bruised a little, but it still tastes fine, he finds, as does the squished sandwich and the crumbled chips.

When Harry’s wrapping his trash back up into the t-shirt, he can’t tell if he hears branches snapping behind him or if the foil bag in his bundle is throwing its sound so that Harry thinks it’s louder than it actually is. He wants to write it off as the bag, but since there definitely  _ are _ bears in Umpqua--he asked Louis just to be sure a couple of days after the Bear Incident--he isn’t about to risk his life.

Harry stands up quickly and jumps onto the rock he was just sitting on to make himself appear larger than he actually is. He doesn’t say anything yet, doesn’t make a sound until he’s sure that he does or does not see a bear. He scans the treeline quickly, looking for anything big and fuzzy and brown, but all he sees is a confused, slightly sunburned face staring back at him.

“What the fuck are you doing, H?” Niall chuckles, smacking the leaves of a bush away as he comes out of the brush. “I saw you up here earlier, took me for _ ever _ to get up here.”

“I thought you were a bear,” Harry frowns, jumping down and sitting once again.

“So you’re telling me,” he starts with a playful smirk, “that if you saw a bear, you would stand on top of a rock and look like you were about to piss yourself?”

“I wasn’t about to piss myself!” Harry defends, scooting over when Niall comes closer to him so that they can sit side by side. “When you see a bear, you’re supposed to act like you’re bigger than it and scare it off. If you were a bear, I would have started yelling.”

“Honestly, H, with a deep voice like yours, you could probably scare  _ anything _ off by yelling at it. Almost shat myself that night I came up to your tower. God, you’re fuckin’ terrifyin’ sometimes.”

Harry chuckles.

“My mom always said I couldn’t hurt a fly, and if I did, I would apologize, so I dunno about being terrifying.”

“Did she really?” Niall asks, looking at Harry while crinkling up his nose. “That’s cute.”

“Sure, until she says it around your friends, and then you can never live it down, yanno?”

“Well if you’re Harry the Fly Saver, you  _ shouldn’t _ live it down.”

“Whatever,” Harry chuckles, shrugging. “What brings you up here?”

“Told you--saw you up here and was wondering what you were doing. What brings  _ you _ up here? Aren’t you a bit far from home?”

“I just…” Harry sighs, “needed some fresh air, which sounds a bit silly considering I don’t really have windows, but like...yeah.”

“Sure,” Niall says, “I know what you mean.”

Harry’s grateful for that ‘cause he’s not sure he could have brought himself to explain that he kind of scared and kind of confused himself so badly while writing that he couldn’t stand to stay in his tower anymore.

“I think I fall too quickly,” Harry admits quietly, staring out towards the trees rather than looking at Niall.

“You fall? I think that’s gravity, dude.”

“I,” Harry starts with his eyebrows knitted together, but then he realizes the joke Niall’s made and he chuckles, shaking his head. “Yeah, it’s gravity. Definitely just gravity.”

Harry thinks Niall knows what he means even though he made a joke instead of answering him directly, but he’s glad they don’t go into it. Neither of them are ready for it.

A few days later, Harry changes his mind. He thinks Niall wasn’t even ready for the confession in its most innocent form, if his disappearance is anything to go by.

It’s not that he’s  _ disappeared _ really, it’s just that Harry hasn’t seen him since even though they’ve been running into each other every day lately.

Harry’s a worrier, he knows that he is, but he’s been past Niall’s camp a couple of times lately and he hasn’t been there, but it seems like all of his stuff still is. Harry doesn’t know much about Niall’s ability to survive with very little to no supplies, but he hopes it’s something Niall’s excellent at else he might be struggling now.

He tries not to call Louis about it, but he’s been trying that since the first day he didn’t run into Niall. It didn’t go well then and it’s going even more poorly now.

“Lou? Have you heard anything about Niall? Haven’t seen him in a while…”

“Nope,” he says, popping the P, making static follow the sound across the air. “You want me to ask Liam?”

Harry hesitates, thinking maybe he does, but maybe he’s just overreacting.

“No,” he decides, “that’s okay.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna bother him. I’m sure Niall’s fine.”

Harry believes himself only because he’s said it out loud. He  _ does _ realize it’s only been three days and there’s probably nothing wrong, but…

That or…

_ Could he have fallen off a cliff? Maybe there actually was a bear by his camp. No, fuck, I just went by his tent this morning and it looked fine. Then shit,  _ Harry thinks,  _ did he leave? Maybe I scared him off, maybe he isn’t ready for anything, I shouldn’t have fucking said anything. _

“Hey, Lou?” Harry asks again, weaker this time as he tries to calm himself down. “How’d you and Eleanor meet?”

“Me and her?” Louis asks, sounding a bit far away. Harry can just make out that he says “did you hear that?” probably to her over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” Harry nods even though it doesn’t matter over radio, “I’m just curious is all.”

“How did we meet then,” Louis more or less repeats Harry’s question. “A friend introduced us…shit, 11 years ago? And I been with her ever since. She’s the love of my life.”

The radio stops like that’s all, but then it cuts in again with Eleanor’s soft voice.

“...nt the  _ whole _ 11 years, though. There was that time in the middle, you know.”

“But  _ honey _ ,” Louis says in this sweet voice, and Harry can just imagine him pulling her close. “I was  _ young _ and  _ stupid _ and I’ve got my head on straight now, don’t I?”

“I guess so,” she giggles, and Harry hears the smack of a kiss.

“What happened in the middle?”

“Ah,” Louis sighs. His voice returns gentler. “My dumbass left her for about a year, like…seven or so ago. had a couple of other relationships, left my family…it was the worst year of my life, honestly. Just took a shock for me to realize there’s no one for me but her, I guess.”

Harry doesn’t have to ask why it was so bad--he remembers Eleanor letting it slip that Louis’s mom passed away and they’d gotten back together afterward.

“That’s really sweet,” Harry mumbles sincerely. He wishes he had a cute love story like that, but all he’s got is a broken heart and a confused mind.

“Sickeningly,” Eleanor giggles through the air, and Harry can just hear Louis start to say something to her when she laughs louder and the transmission cuts out. He thinks he ought to leave them alone, deal with being lonely on his own and not bother them anymore.

Harry leaves his radio on his desk without a second thought when he leaves his tower. He takes the stairs slowly, looking out at the horizon as he walks until he’s too low to see anything past the treeline in front of him.

Much like the last time he felt lost, Harry wanders aimlessly through the trees, going wherever his feet will take him while his mind wanders.

Harry ends up at the creek where he and Niall swam together on multiple occasions.  _ Well, it isn’t really a creek, _ he remembers as he sits along the bank and pulls of his boots and socks,  _ it’s technically the narrow, shallow end of the North Umpqua River, _ Louis told him a couple of weeks ago _. _ (Same difference, he decides. Looks like a big creek, he’s gonna call it a big creek.)

Harry sits at the bank of the  _ river _ splashing his feet around lazily. He’s leaning back on his hands with his eyes closed, face tilted up towards the sun. For almost July, it’s a nice day--by that he means that it isn’t scorching hot and the humidity isn’t choking him. It’s a nice day to just sit in the shade or in the water and reflect, but Harry thinks he’s done enough of that.

What he really thinks he needs right now is another party, a bit of alcohol to take up his mind so that he doesn’t bother worrying about Niall. He won’t say he’s dependent, he doesn’t think that at all--about alcohol  _ and _ Niall--he really just thinks he’s bored.

Harry stands and slowly makes his way downstream, walking in the shallow edges where the rocks are flat and smooth. He watches his feet as he goes, making sure he doesn’t step on any small creatures or glass bottles or--

Glass bottles?

Harry releases a deep sigh as he leans down to pick up the discarded items. He then makes two realizations, the first being that these are bottles of whiskey, and the second being that they’re not empty.

Harry turns one of the bottles over in his hands a few times trying to decide why it’s here and how old they are. There’s no moss or river gunk accumulated to the sides, it looks perfectly clean, but he still doesn’t understand how they got there.

Harry examines each of the three bottles before picking one and sitting down on a rock that  juts up from the middle of the stream. He twists the cap off and takes a swig from it, holding the neck of the bottle in his fist. He grimaces as he lowers the bottle down to hang between his legs because of the position of his forearms against his thighs. He doesn’t question anything else, just takes it all for face value and relaxes.

Harry slips the bottle back into the water to keep it cool after he realizes that’s the reason it was there in the first place. He gets tired of raising it to his mouth and lowering it back into the water, so he slides down off of the rock and sits in the inches-deep water that hardly reaches the top of his thighs. He doesn’t mind that his shorts and underwear are now soaked as much as he thinks he should.

“Ey!” He hears a shout behind him accompanied by rustling as someone comes out of the foliage. “Are you stealing my alcohol?”

Harry turns his head slowly while Niall walks over. He offers a small, sheepish smile that disappears pretty quickly. He takes a drink.

“I thought you said you don’t drink much.” Niall says, toeing off his shoes. He wades into the water and sits down beside Harry, copying his uncaring sentiment in regards to wet clothes.

“I believe I said--”

_ “You booze you lose, _ ” Niall says with Harry. “Yeah, I know. You told me about the time you got so drunk you couldn’t sleep so you tried to go on a run and then threw up. I remember.”

“How long ago did I even tell you that?” Harry laughs softly, holding the bottle in front of Niall. He takes it and their fingers brush together, then he raises it to his mouth and takes a drink.

“Back at the party,” he says, handing the bottle back. “Louis was trying to get you a stronger drink, you told  _ all _ of us, I guess, but I still remember.”

“Oh,” Harry nods. He likes the sound of that, likes it a  _ lot _ actually, that Niall remembered something little that he’d said a month before. He takes another drink when his cheeks flush and comments to himself that this seems like one of those drinking games bored teenagers play--drink when x event happens.

“At this rate you’re gonna drink me dry, H.”

“There’ll still a couple bottles over there.” Harry passes it back to Niall, offering his own drink to him while nodding his head towards the green and brown glass nestled in the cool water.

“But those are  _ weak _ ,” Niall scowls at the bottles. “This is the good stuff.”

“I pick well,” Harry smirks playfully, and Niall scoffs.

“Says the guy with a half naked mermaid on his arm.”

“It’s a sailor tattoo,” Harry explains, rolling his eyes.

“And you’re not a  _ sailor _ ,” Niall teases. “Don’t know  _ what  _ you could be with a pair of tits on your arm.”

_ “Niall!” _ Harry barks out a laugh, shoving Niall with his forearm.

“Careful, spazz, you’re gonna knock our liquor outta my hand.” Niall doesn’t try to fight Harry back, and his insults have no sting. Harry likes the way he feels teasing with Niall, likes the way Niall says “our” instead of “my.”

“I like that,” he says. He doesn’t mean to, not really, but he does.

“Like what?” Niall takes a drink and passes him the bottle. It’s a game of telling the truth now--to Harry, at least.

“The way you said ‘our’.” Harry takes a drink and passes it back.

“Well it  _ is _ ours since you’ve drank half of it already.” Niall seems to be playing along whether he knows it or not.

“You don’t mind though...right?” A long drink follows--Harry doesn’t know that they’ll stop before they reach the end of the bottle.

“Not at all, H.” There’s no sarcasm, no hint of annoyance in his voice. Harry can’t help himself.

“I want to kiss you.”

Harry sits as still as possible after saying it as though it’ll make him blend into the water so Niall can’t see him anymore. Harry’s head already feels like it’s swimming, he might as well keep on going down the stream until Niall forgets what he’s said.

“Then do it.”

Harry’s head whips around so quickly that he almost makes Niall jump. They stare at each other for a moment--well, much longer than a moment, but neither of them quite know how long has passed.

“Are you--”

“I’m sure. Harry, just…” Harry’s too busy trying to decide if Niall looks more scared than Harry  _ feels  _ to lean in when Niall does. When their lips connect, Harry keeps worrying--about his expression, if he can even kiss well enough right now, if Niall thinks he’s drunk and therefore doesn’t actually  _ want _ this as much as he really does--so he makes up for it by scooting a little closer, grabbing at Niall’s shirt and his hair and almost crawling into his damn lap when Niall starts putting his hands on Harry’s waist and his hips.

“We should,” Niall pants against Harry’s lips, “we should stop--for  _ now _ , just for now.”

Harry tries not to pout at the prospect of stopping--the idea of  _ continuing _ definitely helps.

“Okay,” Harry agrees softly, “Yeah, okay… Sorry,” he adds on at the end, swinging his leg over to climb off of his position seated on Niall’s thigh. Niall chuckles at him as he crawls to the bank of the creek, using both of his hands to assist his balance as he tries to stand up. He stumbles and falls anyway though, landing on his shoulder on the ground. He laughs as he rolls over onto his back.

“Come on, loser,” Niall laughs, suddenly popping into view.Harry must not have heard up slosh through the water behind him.

He reaches down and takes Harry’s hands, helping him up. “Get back to your tower,” he mumbles, pressing a slow but short kiss to Harry’s mouth. “Don’t want to miss anything.”

“Don’t wanna miss  _ you, _ ” Harry says back, looking at Niall through droopy eyes. He chuckles and shakes his head, gently batting away Harry’s arms when they attempt to loop around Niall’s waist.

“Go on,” he insists. “You know where to find me.  _ Later _ .”

“How much later?” Harry asks, grabbing at Niall’s hands.

“Let’s just take it as it goes, okay? The sun’s going down, it’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Harry agrees.

He wishes tomorrow would come sooner, so he tries to help it along by getting into bed the moment he gets into his tower.

There’s a supply drop in the morning, so Harry’s up at the crack of dawn to make it out to the meet-up point at about the same time as Liam so that his vegetables and yogurts will still be fresh and cold when he gets them. It’s become routine for him, and he hardly minds waking up so early anymore.

The walk is lovely, which helps quite a bit. He takes the same path each week, so finally by this point in the summer, the weeds are trampled down to form a little path for him. There hasn’t been much rain yet this year, according to Louis. Apparently it rains a lot in this region of Oregon, but Harry wouldn’t really know, he was nearer to the eastern border when he grew up and when he was with Nick. He doesn’t know where’s he’s gonna go now, but he’s starting to hope he’ll stay here.

Regardless of the fact that the season hasn’t been as wet as usual, the flora is still lush. There are pretty wild flowers all around the path he walks almost like they’re lining it for him. The trees and underbrush are so thick in some areas that Harry can hardly see into them. When he  _ does  _ stop to take a peek he sees--

Boots?

Harry strays off the path a bit just to knock a few branches out of the way and kneel down. With the sun out of his eyes, he can see just a bit better--well enough to see a  _ pair _ of boots sticking out from under a branch.

It looks a bit... _ staged _ .

Harry’s heart pounds.

He doesn’t want to go closer but he thinks he has to. It’s his  _ job _ to.

He crawls forward still until he can reach a shaky hand out to move the end of the broken branch to the side enough to reveal ankles in the boots, and legs, and knees. He realizes what he’s looking at immediately.

He screams, and Liam hears it all the way from the cache box.

x

“Harry?”

Louis sighs.

Minutes pass.

“Harry, please.”

_ “Harry.” _

“I’m fine,” Harry mumbles into the receiver halfheartedly. He doesn’t mean it. Louis knows that, Eleanor knows, and even Harry knows, but he says it every time they ask anyway.

“You haven’t left your tower in three days, love,” Eleanor says. “We’re worried about you, Louis’s just too proud to admit it.”

“I’m plenty proud, but I’m also plenty worried,” he states. “Thought that was clear from the thousand calls I’ve made.” His voice trails off at the end, and the transmission pauses, awaiting Harry’s response. He doesn’t really know what to say, so he doesn’t say at all.

“Come  _ on, _ ” Louis says. It’s not quite a whine, but there’s something desperate about it.

“I’ll  _ be _ fine, okay?” Harry sighs. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

“It’s better than what you’ve been giving us,” Louis admits. He ends the transmission before Harry can hear him let out a relieved sigh. He’s been doing that a lot lately--ending the transmission before Harry can hear him worry. He’s told Eleanor he’s going to march himself over to Harry about ten times already, but she stops him every time, more so in favor of giving Harry time to sort his mind out rather than storming the castle and forcing him out before he’s ready.

The pair leave him alone for another couple of hours. It’s what they’ve been doing lately: trying to get him to talk, then leaving him alone for just a while before they start up again. Harry doesn’t  _ mind _ , he thinks it’s nice of them to care about him so much--deep down, anyway. On the surface, he can’t really think about anything other than life and the inevitability of death.

Harry was that annoying kid in high school anatomy who couldn’t stand cow eye or sheep heart dissections, he  _ certainly _ couldn’t have handled seeing a real life actual genuine human corpse, but he did. Needless to say, he isn’t doing too well.

He ran out of paper the day before because his thoughts have been moving too quickly to keep up with the rations Liam can get him each week. Harry knows he’d probably cause a shift in the budget if he asks for more, so he never does.

Instead he’s just taken up the process of numbering all of his pages like a diary, the first numbers on all the typed sides, then whatever numbers come next on the backs of them all to accompany his messy handwriting. He’s gone through a few hundred pages by the end of the day when he counts up all the things he wrote about Niall and Nick and Louis and the forest and everything else from the beginning of the summer.

He wishes he hadn’t written so much when he realizes that he’s going to have to take this home with him, but he still can’t help but to think it’ll be a good record of his life-- _ including _ the bad days--when he dies.

And now even though he’s spent hours meticulously rereading and organizing his papers like a madman, he’s right back to thinking about death. This day’s been gloomy, even, like the rain was just waiting for something bad to happen to him before it starts up.

It’s gotten what rain always seems to want, then--sad, gloomy people to accompany its dark rain clouds and booming thunder.

“I’ve got eyes on some lightning, Harry,” Louis says a few minutes after the sky initially darkened over Harry. He looks up to the window just long enough to tell that the storm is rolling in from the north.

“Roger,” Harry says back simply. His worry stays on his work, wondering if the rain is going to come into his tower despite the overhanging roof that’s supposed to shield his exposed windows to the weather.

Harry tucks his pages into two drawers in neat stacks (because they won’t all fit in one) before looking for that handful of nails he pulled out of the drywood window covers back in May. He might need them if the storm gets bad like Louis seems to be hinting it will.

“The rain’s starting to come down,” Louis tells him, “it’s not very hard yet, just a bit of a drizzle I’d say. It’s picking up quick th--fuck  _ me _ , there’s more lightning. Is it too much to ask that we either have no lighting and rain or a  _ lot _ of rain and  _ no _ lightning? Fuck.”

_ Can’t control the weather, _ Harry wants to say, but all he asks is “should I close up some of my windows?”

“Can’t really tell which way it’s coming down yet.” Louis’s voice is soft and slow like he isn’t really paying attention to Harry while he’s talking, but like he’s watching the clouds roll like Harry thinks he probably should be doing too.

Harry leaves his radio on his desk and steps out of the door to his room to the deck of the tower. His door catches on a gush of wind and slams backward against the inner wall--he curses and checks to see if it left any damage while any loose items start blowing around in his room.

“Is it even safe to board up the windows with wind like this?”

“No,” Louis says. “If it gets really strong and the wind can’t go through, it’ll tip your tower--we used to have three, what do you think happened to the other one?

“You better hope the wind is coming from a different direction than the rain, otherwise you’re gonna have to rearrange your shit so it doesn’t get wet. I think the rain is...well, mostly straight down, but it’s catching the wind… It’s going southeast, I’d say, but more south. Maybe block up your north window.”

“But what if your tower gets hit by lightning or something?”

“I’ll be here to feel it, then,” Louis says. “Don’t worry about seeing me. The storm is moving  _ fast _ but there’s no end in sight. Hurry.”

Harry thinks there’s static in the transmission, and maybe there is, but it’s mostly rain in the background, hitting Louis’s roof and rushing to the deck where it can drip down to the ground. He wishes he had a newer tower like Louis’s with windows that actually have a glass layer to protect the mesh screen.

“Fuck, oh fuck, fucking  _ shit _ , Harry!”

“What?!” Harry yells, abandoning his effort to pull his desk away from the wall and stand his mattress up in the middle of the room.

“Niall! You have to go get Niall!”

“Nia--”

“He’s out in this fucking storm in nothing but a tent, Harry! This isn’t  _ safe _ !”

_ Oh fuck. _ He scrambles to get his boots on and runs out the door before bothering to grab something to shield him from the rain any without saying anything back to Louis. His wooden stairs are already a bit slippery when he sprints down them, skipping two or three in between and almost falling at every one.

The rain can’t get through the trees as well as it can through open air-- _ obviously-- _ so Harry takes his usual path under the trees even though it isn’t the fastest way since he has to slide down shale and climb over newly stricken down trees thanks to the lightning. He’s glad the rain is so heavy or else this probably would have caught fire.

Harry sees and hears other animals scurrying around and trying to find shelter while he navigates his way to Niall’s camp. When he gets there, just from the opening of the clearing he can see that something bad has happened.

The metal frame of Niall’s tent is still standing, but the material around it is gone. His sleeping bag and clothes are still there in a mess of rainwater, and there are slippery footprints all around the area, he sees when he gets closer.

Harry looks around from where he stands beside what’s left of Niall’s camp. He thinks he could have been Niall pass him in the forest if he went that way, and he doesn’t think Niall would be stupid in this situation by going to the top of the rock outcropping, so Harry darts into the woods that lead towards Lake Maidu instead of the ones that lead towards his tower.

“Harry?!” a voice yells through the sound of rain pounding on the trees before he gets too far in.

“Niall!” Harry shouts back, stopping in his tracks, looking around frantically. “Niall, is that you?!”

Niall wriggles out from between the underside of the cliff and a fallen log to come through the trees in front of Harry. He’s wrapped in the muddy green nylon that Harry’s pretty sure used to be in the shape of his tent.

“What happened,” he asks loudly, grabbing Niall’s arm to pull him back off of this trail and towards Fairview. Niall already knows where they’re going just based on assumption, or he doesn’t care where Harry’s taking him. Either works.

“I was trying to sleep when the rain started and then it collapsed my tent on top of me and the fuckin’ thing ripped so I grabbed what I could, wrapped the material around me, and ran. I was gonna try to get to you when the rain died down a bit.”

“Well, so was I,” Harry says, “but I couldn’t wait that long, couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.” Niall shakes his arm free and wraps part of the tent around Harry’s shoulder so the rain bounces off the material and rolls away rather than soaking into his already drenched clothes. Harry’s too busy worrying about getting struck by lightning to admire how cute the gesture is, so he wraps his arm around Niall’s waist and they run.

Louis’s seconds away from calling search and rescue for Harry and Niall when they reach the top of the stairs. While Harry lunges for the radio to respond to Louis’s distress call, he notices that he really should have boarded up the windows when he had a chance ‘cause now water is pouring in through the north windows just like Louis said.

“I’m here, Niall’s here, we’re okay.”

“You scared the shit out of me!” Louis yells, and his voice cracks because of the statis caused by the storm or because of something that Harry can’t see.

Niall makes himself busy while Harry talks to Louis about what protocol is for a freak storm like this. His tent scrap isn’t the biggest, but it’s just big enough to cover two of the windows when it’s stretched out. He has to jump a bit to reach the top of the frame, but he manages to get the fabric wedged into the wood to hold its ground as the rain continues.

Harry pulls Niall into a hug the moment he walks back into the door, forcing it shut behind him.

“...scenario, we have to evacuate. I don’t think it’s gonna come to that, not  _ yet _ anyway, but if your tower is compromised, it’s all you can do. No man can stop one of these things from coming down.”

“Are we going to have to leave?” Niall asks Harry with a worried look.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, “we’re gonna have to sit and wait.”

They feel like sitting ducks huddled together on Harry’s mattress in the middle of the floor of his swaying tower, but they feel like they’ll make it. 

“Don't think I’ve ever been in such a storm,” Niall mumbles into the space between his mouth and Harry’s.

“No?” Harry asks softly, leaning in to peck at Niall’s bottom lip softly. “Went to visit some family once in Texas during tornado season. Thought I wasn’t gonna make it.”

“Mm,” Niall hums softly, jumping when thunder cracks nearby, rumbling and shaking the ground around them. Harry slides his hands lower on Niall’s waist to drag him closer.

“That would have been unfortunate,” Niall continues after they get some giggles out at Niall’s expense. “Wouldn’t have you here with me now if you died in a tornado.”

“Gee,” Harry chuckles softly, “it’s a good thing I lived so that I could die in another storm making out with a cute boy.”

“It’s better than going out alone, isn’t it?”

Harry doesn’t answer, just pushes his lips against Niall’s and digs his fingers into the squishy flesh above his hip bones, pushing the wet material of his shirt up slowly.

x

Louis calls Harry immediately when the storm subsides at Oakridge. He’s still watching lightning streak across the sky, but the rain has faded out to a soft drizzle, and the hints of a rainbow are out on Mt. McLoughlin.

“The sun is out, Lovebirds. How are you handling?”

Harry’s asleep with his face nestled into Niall’s shoulder, so Niall gently takes the radio from his side of the bed and pushes down the transmission button that he’s seen Harry hit several times.

“We’re okay,” he tells him softly, “Harry’s asleep.”

“He slept through the storm?”

Niall smirks to himself but doesn’t even consider what knocked Harry out during the storm.

“He doesn’t look like he’s been getting much sleep.” Niall leans his cheek against Harry’s damp hair and keeps his voice low. It may not be his initial response, but it’s true--the bags under Harry’s eyes are prominent in a way that Niall hasn’t seen before.

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Louis sighs. “Let him sleep. Tell him to call me when he wakes up. It’s important but not urgent.”

“Will do.”

Niall tries not to disturb Harry while he reaches up to the firefinder he’s leaning on to put the radio away, but it wakes Harry up anyway, or at least the movement makes him acknowledge that he’s awake.

“Was that Louis?” Harry asks groggily, huffing to flip his curls away from his face temporarily. It doesn’t really work, it just leaves him pouting, and Niall thinks it’s adorable.

“Yeah, he said to call him when you wake up, but I think he’s expecting you to be out longer. You should sleep.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Niall says with a hint of a laugh although the admittance isn’t so funny. It breaks Harry’s heart to think Niall means it short term and long term.

“Then that’s a yes.” He sits upright from his position against Niall and rolls his neck a couple of times before stretching with a moan-like sigh.

“Do you want me to--”

“Stay down.” Niall smiles while Harry lays back down, laying on his tummy and half on Niall, going right back to nudging his nose against Niall’s neck. His eyes are already closed so he doesn’t get to see the fond smile that cracks across Niall’s face.

“Still welcome all cuddles, right?” he asks, and this time Harry’s the one who smiles.

“Of course I do.”

Harry ends up sleeping for another couple of hours--Niall isn’t tired given that it’s nearing evening even though the sun is still high in the sky, but he’s perfectly content holding Harry while he sleeps, shushing him when he starts mumbling and whining unconsciously, rubbing his back to soothe out the wrinkles on his face.

Niall takes the time to look at Harry-- _ really _ look at him, not squinting against the sunlight, not through stolen glances out of the corner of his eye, not at the back of him when he’s not paying attention. Niall counts all the little freckles on his face and even the mole on his chin, he follows the curve of every eyelash and the cupid’s bow of his lip, and he thinks that he’s almost glad the summer started the way it did. He’s glad to be here now, to have gotten to know the dorky lookout who took his fireworks just a few days into his camping trip.

“What’re you looking at?” Harry asks groggily, startling Niall.

“Thought you were sleeping,” he whispers back, brushing his thumb in an arch across Harry’s mid back.

“Was,” Harry confirms, “but not anymore. Do I have something on my face?”

“Eh,” Niall shrugs, “maybe just a bit of drool.” Harry opens his eyes and pouts at Niall, turning his head down towards the bed quickly to hide any evidence--there isn’t any, though. Niall was just teasing.

“I’m  _ kidding _ ,” Niall chuckles. “You weren’t drooling.”

“It’s  _ embarrassing _ ,” Harry whines, burying his face into Niall’s neck, rubbing his nose against his shoulder.

“Wait--are you saying that you  _ do _ drool?”

Harry doesn’t say anything. Niall can feel him, still and tense, and laughs.

“You’re cute, you know that?”

“Cut it out,” Harry deflects, sitting up. “Did Louis say what he wanted me to call for?”

“No, just said it’s urgent but not important--or, uh, I think it was  _ important _ but not  _ urgent _ .”

Harry smiles fondly while Niall scratches his head.

“Promise I know what I’m talking about,” Niall chuckles.

“I’m sure you do.” Harry’s smile grows while he reaches for the walkie talkie that he can see just peeking off the edge of the firefinder.

_ “Louis _ ,” he calls into it. “What’d you need to talk to me about?”

“Ahh, good morning, sunshine,” he teases. “It’s like your first day all over again what with you sleeping all day.”

“Uh huh, so you called just to mess with me?” Harry’s only joking, of course. He knows Louis will get to the point eventually, he just thinks it’s become increasingly fun to poke and prod right back at him.

_ “You _ called  _ me _ , H, but good one. No, what I needed to tell you is--well, look out your north window a bit to the east.”

“My--?” Harry cuts himself off and looks at Niall with a confused expression before getting up. The windows at the north side are blocked still from Niall’s clever shield, so Harry steps out onto the deck and--

“Is that a fire?”

“First one of the season. We’re lucky it didn’t start sooner. It’s really not that  _ bad _ \--”

“Not that bad? I know I’ve never really seen a forest fire before, but this looks pretty bad, Lou.”

“It’s  _ not _ ,” Louis insists. His tone is very dismissive, very...experienced, Harry’s rational mind tells him. He allows the thought to calm him down.

“What do we do then?”

“We watch. It’s what we’re here for, after all.”

“That’s….that’s all?”

“Yeah.”

Harry thinks that sounds easy enough.

He watches he gray smoke plumes rise and swirl into the sky and wonders if the fire’s going to get much bigger any time soon or if he’ll get to stay here a while longer. Hopefully the dampness of the surrounding forest will hold the flames at bay--hopefully it’ll stop.

(It doesn’t, though.)

The fire roars to life over the next two weeks. Niall and Harry watch it glow brighter and brighter each night, sometimes thinking it’ll go out when a bit of rain drizzles through the morning.

On a lighter note, sometimes they’re unable to tell if they feel so hot because of the fire coming closer or because of what they’ve gotten up to--they playfully decide it’s just a side effect of having sex in an open-air tower in the middle of summer, but they both secretly worry one day they’ll wake up to smoke not being the only thing blowing in through the windows.

Louis’s the only one who seems to think it’s no big deal, or at least he acts that way so that the others aren’t afraid--he’s used to doing that with his younger sisters, so he’s an expert at it. He never wants anyone to carry the worry that he does.

“I don’t think there’s any sign of it stopping,” Louis sighs into the receiver. It’s the first of August.

“At this rate, it might overtake the forest… I’m gonna call it in.”

“Call it in? As in, you haven’t told anyone there’s a fire yet?”

“No, they  _ know _ we’ve been watching a fire, but it’s up to me to make it official. We need to name it, boys.”

“Naming it makes it official?” Niall asks Harry before he says anything to Louis--he only shrugs.

“Any suggestions?” Louis asks.

“Firey fire,” Harry says immediately, and Niall scoffs.

“What kind of name is that?” He laughs, and so does Harry.

“No ideas?” Louis asks without really giving them a chance to respond since they were talking to each other and not to him through the radio. “I’m thinking Nary A.”

“Nary A?”

“‘Nary’ like ‘not any’ because it sounds kind of like your names put together but is an actual word, and the A to make it a sentence. Nary a fire burn as bright as Nary A. Fire.”

Niall lets out this little laugh like a giggle, and Harry looks over to see him lean back, trying to hide his wide grin and red face under his hat. Harry knocks it away and leans down to peck a  kiss on his cheek before saying back to Louis,

“We like that idea.”

It’s cute, at least for them, it makes them happy but also kind of frightened to think that something named after them burns and destroys so quickly. They hope their love won’t be like that, something fast and hot and then over.

Harry worries about it while he’s at his writing desk one early morning. Niall’s still asleep, white sheets tangled around his hips and leg where he sprawls out across the narrow bed. Harry wishes he had a camera so he could take a picture, wishes he was an artist rather than a writer so he could draw it out.

Either way, he thinks of Niall and of their story, what’s become of them and will because of the fire. He wonders if their time is wasted watching from the sky rather than going on like nothing has happened--it’d be nice to go swimming again before the summer is over, but he’s afraid they’ll stray too close to the fire or it’ll surround them when they aren’t paying attention.

He  _ already _ worries that’s happened to them. The fire creeps lower and lower on Harry’s eastern side every day, and it’s started spreading west towards him. He lost visibility of Louis’s tower a few days ago because of the smoke wall the fires are creating between them.

“Tell me again why I shouldn’t worry,” he sighs into the receiver. “I can’t even see your tower anymore, how am I supposed to know if you’ve burnt down?”

“Fires are beneficial to the environment, Harry. Old shit is burned away, the ash makes the soil fertile, and new shit can grow in a couple of years.” Louis sighs even though his explanation is confident and solid. Harry starts to ask what’s wrong, but Louis cuts him off.

“I think I might call for an evacuation.”

“A  _ what _ ?”

“You heard me, Harry. I don’t wanna risk any of our lives out here… I think it’s time for the authorities, the higher-ups to kick in. This is beyond us, beyond me.”

“Louis, I--”

“We have to, Harry. Please don’t argue.” It sounds like it pains him to say it--it pains Harry to  _ hear _ it.

“I don’t want to. I want to stay.”

“Harry--”

“I can’t leave yet, this summer  _ can't _ end like this!” Niall’s woken up now. He’s looking at Harry confused, silently mouthing  _ what’s wrong? _

“I’ve already called search and rescue--they’re coming. Pack your things.”

Harry tries his damndest to reach Louis back, but he’s gone off air. Niall gets out of bed and crosses the room to him while he yells obscenities into the radio--empty threats for empty air.

“Harry,” Niall says, gently resting his hands on Harry’s shoulders. He doesn’t know what to say next, just wraps his arms around Harry when he turns to Niall to hide his wobbly lip against his belly.

“I don’t want it to end like this,” Harry whines shakily.

_ “What _ to end, exactly?”

“This, us, everything about this place. I didn’t know what I was looking for when I came out here but now that I’ve found it, I don’t want to leave.”

“It’s not safe for us here anymore, H, but that doesn’t mean we have to lose touch.”

“We’re going to, though, all of us. People never really have as much time to call as they think they do, Niall.” Harry won’t let tears fall--he knows Niall’s right and he isn’t so much sad as he is angry. It’s unfair that everything, all the dynamics and relationships built up over months can be ended by some force of nature.

_ “Harry _ ,” Niall laughs softly, running his hand through Harry’s hair. “I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t have a home anymore, remember? I’m sure Zayn’s already trashed all my junk. If you want, we can find a place--together--then this doesn’t have to end.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Niall chuckles, “it’ll be like mending our broken hearts together.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was very self-indulgent because i just reaaaaaally love Firewatch, so thank you if you made it this far. again, [you can find me here on tumblr.](http://narryblossom.tumblr.com/post/159042993335/a-humming-in-the-restless-summer-air-narry)


End file.
